Album of the Week: Waxahatchee Ivy Tripp

There's something to be said for the direct approach.

That's the only way Katie Crutchfield – vocalist and creative force behind Waxahatchee – knows how to approach her music. It shines through in her lyrics – funny, witty, and sad, all at the same time – and her music, which always sounds like it was banged out by actual musicians who know each other. These days, you rarely get to hear albums that sound as clear and unproduced as the work Crutchfield does – it's a skill that not many posses.

The glorious Ivy Tripp, Crutchfield's third as Waxahatchee, takes everything that people have been digging about her music since her 2012 debut (the ferociously personal lyrics and stunningly diverse sonic sensibilities), and boils it all down to its purest form. It's a pop album the same way Pet Sounds is – an album entirely filtered through one wildly creative world view. Ivy Tripp embraces contradictions and manages to be both welcoming and standoffish, of its time and ahead of it, criminally catchy and utterly dense the surface.

If there's a theme to the album, it's the passage of time and how that changes the way we perceive events, particularly surrounding relationships. Take the way Crutchfield heartbreakingly looks back at a summer romance on "Summer of Love:" "I didn't think, now I'm here/Treading water without you," she sings over a simple acoustic guitar riff and the wind breezing through the trees. It sounds as if she's processing the end of the relationship on her porch not long after it happened, working her way back through her shared memories. She attempts to connect with people while mourning the relationship, then slips into reveries of better times while those same people are talking, and all she really wants to do is look at her photo of the pair together. When she sings, "The summer of love is a photo of us," over and over during the chorus, it's as devastating as it is lovely.

Elsewhere on the album, she uses a simple organ line and echoing vocals on "Stale by Noon" to confront the way memories are almost always more positive than the actual event, and on "La Loose" she crafts the poppiest song on the album about a lover that can't seem to let go of the past. "I selfishly want you here to stick to," she pleads in a voice so sweet that it seems impossible anyone would say no.

The best two songs on the album – and contender for best emotional one-two punch of the year – are "Blue" and "Air," and both serve as the thesis statements for Crutchfield's approach on Ivy Tripp. "Blue" comes first, and features just an electric guitar and cascading vocals that simulate the very running water Crutchfield is singing about. It's just a few seconds longer than two minutes, yet manages to be utterly, utterly enchanting. It's like a Fleet Foxes song with just one person.

"Air" follows with perhaps the best vocal work on the album, showing off Crutchfield's entire range – from cooing "oohs" in the background to a leap in tone and pitch during the chorus that can send chills down your spine. The lyrics about someone who is "patiently giving me everything that I will never need," manages to be both heartbreaking and incriminatory without naming the guilty party. Who is at fault here? The person who is giving her the wrong things or Crutchfield herself for not wanting them? She doesn't say, and that ambiguity is another constant on Ivy Tripp.

I really can't say enough about the instrumentation on the album, which runs the gamut from my bloody valentine-style feedback and reverb on "The Dirt," to Carole King piano stylings on "Half Moon." It's the perfect marriage of music and lyrics, and throughout Crutchfield keeps ahold of her punk sensibilities, managing to deliver absolutely killer tracks in three minutes or less.

Not for one moment on Ivy Tripp does Crutchfield let go of her honesty – not only where it concerns others, but also about herself. She can be downright brutal when she wants to, but that's part of her creative process, and she comes out of it absolutely gleaming. On "Less Than" she blasts someone with the line," You're less than me, I am nothing." As Ivy Tripp proves, Crutchfield has it wrong – she is everything.

Ivy Tripp is out on Merge.

Album of the Week: Tobias Jesso Jr. Goon

You don't hear piano as the lead instrument much these days.

For a while there, Coldplay and Keane were the lead ambassadors of the notion that the piano is still a viable rock instrument, but Coldplay transitioned to the guitar and string sounds championed by U2, and Keane…well, I'm not sure what happened to Keane.

There was a time in the 50s and 60s when the piano was the primary songwriting instrument (hell, it might still be, I'm no musician) for some truly, truly classic songs.

Tobias Jesso Jr. would have fit right in during that era, but on his debut album, Goon, he manages to create music that feels both of its time, and timeless.

Jesso channels a variety of classic rock songwriters on Goon, from Carole King and Harry Nilsson to Jackson Browne and Randy Newman – all writers who were able to produce shimmeringly lovely music from a simple palette. On all but two of the 12 songs on the album, the piano and Jesso's boy-next-door voice are front and center, and he sings with an untrained earnestness that marked so much of the aforementioned artists' best work.

Jesso knows how to push his voice when he wants to – check out the way his comes this close to breaking near the end of "How Could You Babe" as he pleads for understanding from a former flame.

The man is staggeringly capable of writing a hook – "Can We Still Be Friends" has a King piano line that is immediately accessible and infectious, and Jesso pairs it with his best young Paul McCartney plea. "Leaving LA" is another impossibly catchy piano-driven number that quietly builds to a gorgeous choral climax.

"The Wait" and album closer "Tell The Truth" prove that Jesso is as skilled on the guitar as he is on the piano - both are incredibly catchy finger-picked acoustic numbers that sound like they could've come from either Browne or James Taylor in their heydays.

Jesso isn't a complete throwback artist, however, and while he certainly embraces the pop stylings from the 60s, he isn't afraid to bring his own flourishes to the songs.

On "Hollywood" Jesso manages to channel both Newman and Death Cab for Cutie's "Why You'd Want to Live Here" without any of the expected bitterness. It's just him and his piano, singing like he's the only guy in some dive bar on the strip, about to give up on Los Angeles and crawl away. When he brings the horns in at the end of the song, they bleat and blare like they're the first line is his shambling pity parade. There's a little bit of Radiohead in the way the horns cut across Jesso's piano – it's wildly emotive without using any words.

"Crocodile Tears" is hilarious, tongue-in-cheek ode to a ball-breaker who leaves him in ruins that features the best Elton John piano-work this side of Goodbye Yellow Brick Road and the electric guitars are straight out of a George Harrison solo – a little strange at first, but it completely fits the song.

Looking back at what I've written so far, you've probably noticed how much I'm referencing other artists in this piece. This could lead you to think if you're already fans of the source material, there's no need to sample Goon. And that's wrong.

Perhaps the most impressive feat on this simple gem of an album is the way Jesso manages to funnel all these influences through his lovesick worldview. He sounds like the young man he is, wiser than his years, but still dumb enough to keep falling in love with the wrong people. In time – one hopes – he'll learn wisdom, but as Goon ably proves, he's further ahead than most.

Goon is out on True Panther Sounds.