Waxahatchee’s Katie Crutchfield gets realistic about love in her new song “Can’t Do Much.” The track is the third single off her upcoming album Saint Cloud, out March 27th on Merge Records.
The clip — grainy to resemble a vintage film — opens with Crutchfield in a striking red blazer, performing the track with her band. “We will coalesce like heaven and hell/My eyes roll around like dice on the felt,” she sings. “In my loneliness, I’m locked in a room/When you see me I’m honey on a spoon.”
Roses adorn Crutchfield’s microphone à la Linda Ronstadt, who heavily influenced Saint Cloud: “I’ve become so obsessive about people like Lucinda Williams, Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris,” she recently told Rolling Stone. “All these country powerhouse women. I wanted to step into that power a little bit.”
Crutchfield has been performing “Can’t Do Much” live for two years. “It’s meant to be an extremely unsentimental love song, a love song with a strong dose of reality,” she said. “It was written early on in a relationship, where the feelings were super intense, but also fear or apprehension were sort of keeping me from totally relaxing in it yet. Sort of like ‘It’s annoying that I love you so much.’ Totally unromantic, which sort of makes it really romantic to me.”
“Can’t Do Much” follows the singles “Lilacs” and “Fire.“