I Won’t Give You What You Want

Waxahatchee “Grass Stain”

This song reminds me a lot of Robert Pollard, and I think you will probably play this and think “oh, because it’s lo-fi,” but no, that’s not really it. Pollard has a few different song types he goes back to over and over, and one of those is “brief acoustic ballad about drinking too much and being sad with a strong melody and no chorus.” (Some of his best songs in this vein happen to be on Waved Out.) I’m really fond of this style, and Katie Crutchfield does it really well, finding the perfect balance of languid despair and bright melody. This kind of song really cuts deep for me – there’s a lot of different ways of expressing depression and sadness in music, but the sentiment and tone of this song and lots of Pollard numbers is the closest to how I actually experience these feelings. Maybe not so much the laments about drinking too much, but definitely the circular self-pity and attempts to rationalize irrational relationships.

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