[2] Following the release of Waxahatchee's debut album, American Weekend (2012), Katie Crutchfield toured extensively as a duo, with her friend Katherine: "It was just the two of us, which was also kind of hard staying away from pretty much everybody that I know for that long.

"[3] Songwriter and primary recording artist Katie Crutchfield wrote Cerulean Salt over the course of a year, stating: "For me, I’ve always been, like, I can just spit out a bunch of songs really quickly.

"[3] The album's lyrical content is primarily concerned with songwriter and recording artist Katie Crutchfield's views on adulthood: "A lot of it is about realizing that your childhood is over, that your innocence is gone.

She wrote that the album showed Katie Crutchfield as "a new songwriting voice to reckon with", aligning its "blazingly honest [and] hyper-personal quality" with musicians Cat Power, Elliott Smith, and Liz Phair.

[12] Jim Carroll for The Irish Times called Crutchfield's songwriting "confident, audacious, and natural" and singled out several songs as "lyrically strong and honest, and perfectly pitched.

[18] Ranking it #107 on their list, BrooklynVegan dubbed the album "a touchstone" for the fusion of emo, folk, indie rock, and punk styles occurring that decade.