On 'Tigers Blood,' Waxahatchee is in her anti-eras era

Even if you've never listened to a note of Taylor Swift's music in your life, it's undeniable that we're living through our eras era. The smart branding of the pop superstar's record-breaking world tour has propagated the idea, taken from the language of stan culture, that life passes in clear chapters. Social media helps us mark those chapters with distinct visual identities, highly specific fashion -cores stitching together an aesthetic micro-history. This mentality of clear demarcation has also found a match in the language of absolutes that has sprung up around interpersonal relationships: boundaries, cutting out "toxic" friends; packing up, shipping out and moving on from the mess.

I can understand the appeal of this kind of containment. The notion that you've closed the door on a certain period, Katie Crutchfield's gorgeous sixth album as , sails down that river. The 35-year-old Alabama songwriter understands that we do not evolve tidily from chrysalis to caterpillar to butterfly, but stumble along a zig-zag of pitfalls and revelations, the best of which you can only hope you have the humility to learn from.