Names can be misleading. I'd always assumed based on Waxahatchee's that her music would be on the inaccessible side, but that turns out to be 100% wrong, as these two albums - I came to them backwards, 2017's Out in the Storm then 2015's Ivy Tripp - are actually brim full of anthemic power-pop steeped in some of my favourite alternative-y textures from the 90s (and therefore from any period full stop).
Throwing Muses and Belly are huge reference points for me, but also it seems for a whole lot of whatever-indie-music-is-these days artists right now (see eg Honeyblood) and if a dash of Helium's jagged guitar sound finds its way in there too and there's some haunting in moments by Siamese Dream, well so much the better. Out in the Storm is the more densely electric guitared and studio-produced and fuller-tilt of the two, with more prominent woo-ooh-oohs, and so maybe it's not a surprise that it's the one I like more - but on the other hand Ivy Tripp has a bunch of gorgeous fraught quieter songs in the borderlands between Kim Deal and Lisa Germano, so, that's pretty good too.
Also: another realisation of how much Taylor Swift has colonised my brain - I was well-disposed towards "Sparks Fly" just because of its title even before I heard it.
Throwing Muses and Belly are huge reference points for me, but also it seems for a whole lot of whatever-indie-music-is-these days artists right now (see eg Honeyblood) and if a dash of Helium's jagged guitar sound finds its way in there too and there's some haunting in moments by Siamese Dream, well so much the better. Out in the Storm is the more densely electric guitared and studio-produced and fuller-tilt of the two, with more prominent woo-ooh-oohs, and so maybe it's not a surprise that it's the one I like more - but on the other hand Ivy Tripp has a bunch of gorgeous fraught quieter songs in the borderlands between Kim Deal and Lisa Germano, so, that's pretty good too.
Also: another realisation of how much Taylor Swift has colonised my brain - I was well-disposed towards "Sparks Fly" just because of its title even before I heard it.
