February 6, 2017

Allison Crutchfield’s Sonic Makeover

The singer swaps scruffy garage rock for an electronic sound on her new album “Tourist in This Town.”


Allison Crutchfield
Tourist in This Town
Merge

Courtesy of Merge

Like Speedy Ortiz leader Sadie Dupuis, who recently swapped guitars for synths on her solo album debut, Allison Crutchfield gives herself a sonic makeover on Tourist in This Town, the excellent first longplayer under her own name. Trading the scruffy garage rock of her work in P.S. Eliot and Swearin’ for shiny analog electronics hasn’t dulled her edge one iota, however. Crutchfield’s songs are memorably pithy vignettes of failed or wobbly relationships that marry her engagingly raspy voice to dramatic melodies guaranteed to stick in the brain. Best of all, she deftly captures difficult situations with a few well-turned lyrics, exclaiming, “You ask for forgiveness/All while maintaining your innocence,” in “Dean’s Room,” and declaring, “You assume you understand because your voice is the loudest,” on “Mile Away.” Tourist creates the thrilling, albeit uneasy, sensation of leafing through a stranger’s diary, and you can dance to it, too.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

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And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

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