After a series of albums that felt like thrilling explorations, Katie Crutchfield sounds settled in on Tigers Blood, her sixth full-length under the Waxahatchee banner. Whether that artistic stabilization is entirely good news is likely going to vary listener to listener. Now that she’s skittered across the branches of the alternative music family tree all the way from Mother Love Bone to Uncle Tupelo, Crutchfield operates with an easy contentment, even as she’s singing songs speckled with notes of misgiving and misery.

A native of Alabama, Crutchfield grew up surrounded by country music. That aspect ingrained into her being didn’t really manifest on record until the magnificent Saint Cloud. It took the safety-in-numbers collaboration with Jess Williamson, on the Plains album I Walked with You a Ways, for Crutchfield to full embrace her twangier, more plaintive side. With its trilled yearning, Tiger Blood is arguably more of a successor to the one-off outing with Williamson than anything in the Waxahatchee catalog proper. Throughout the album, Crutchfield operates with the clear eyes and slight sheepishness of someone who finally embraced formative influences that she rebelliously rejected previously.

At the album’s best, Tigers Blood is a welcome homecoming. The album’s first single, “Right Back to It,” is a magnificent piece of work. Harmonizing with new collaborator MJ Lenderman, of the band Wednesday and a concurrent solo career of some note, Crutchfield uses a pristine hook and emotionally wrought lyrics (“I’ve been yours for so long/ We come right back to it/ I let my mind run wild/ Don’t know why I do it”) to get at the messiness of relationships with a wounded clarity that recalls Amanda Shires’s recent powerhouse (and, as it turns out, pre-divorce) album Take It Like a Man. The spare, tingly “365” has a similar restrained, confident authority in its candor and vulnerability (“If you fly up beyond thе cosmos/ It’s a long way to fall back down/ You always go about this the wrong way/ And I’m too weak to just let you drown”).

For all the album’s considerable strengths, there are also times when Crutchfield’s songwriting flattens out. On “Burns Out at Midnight,” the plainspoken becomes simply plain: “If I put up a fight, it’ll follow me home/ I think I might stay out dancing/ If my blood runs cold with a heart of stone/ And my fire burns out at midnight.” And Crutchfield’s usual gift for metaphor falters sometimes, leaving songs a tangle of elusive impressions, as is the case on “Lone Star Lake” when she sings, “You swerve to hit a dead deer/ A girl like that would bore you to tеars, baby/ It’s cosmic.” Producer Brad Cook, who oversaw both Saint Cloud and I Walked with You a Ways, places Crutchfield’s vocals so prominently in the mix that the lesser turns of phrase are inescapable.

I will concede that the moments that fall short probably resonate more because of the high expectations that come with a Waxahatchee album at this point. Crutchfield’s extended winning streak invites closer scrutiny of each new album. It’s not enough to tally up impressions — that “Bored” is reminiscent of Waxahatchee’s transitional Out in the Storm, and both “Crowbar” and “The Wolves” come across as declarations of debt to Lucinda Williams — when it feels like deeper truths are implicitly promised. Tigers Blood is a solid album. It suffers mainly because it’s the first Waxhatchee album in quite some time that isn’t transformative.