Another week, another Friday concert. This means we once again
have a two-fer, featuring an album review and a concert review.
Disc 1915 is…Valentine
Artist: Courtney Marie Andrews
Year of Release: 2026
What’s up with the Cover? For the second time
in as many reviews (Disc 1903) we encounter Courtney Marie Andrews
enduring some sort of mildly disagreeable weather with the sun setting.
Here, on a windswept coastline, a determined but apprehensive
Courtney Marie Andrews reaches back and invites a shadowy figure to join her,
not realizing that should that shadow walk into the light with her he will, by
his very nature, cease to be.
Or is it just another photo shoot where they ran out of light and
if so, maybe for the next record everyone should just get started a little
earlier. If we keep this up, Courtney is going to catch the ague.
How I Came To Know It: I have been a fan of Andrews since 2016, so this was just me buying her
latest release.
How It Stacks Up: Having picked up an early release at the
live show last night, I now have seven Courtney Marie Andrews albums.
“Valentine” comes in at #6.
Ratings: 3 stars
There’s a thing that happens to most contemporary folk artists at
some point if they stick around long enough – they start going for fancier production.
This is generally not a welcome development in the CD Odyssey experience, but
it can be overcome by great vocals and songs with good bones. “Valentine” is a
good example of this eternal struggle of tradition and technology.
Andrews began her “hmmm…what is all this equipment?” phase
in earnest on 2022’s “Loose Future”. Four years later with “Valentine” she still
has a fair share of playing about with mellotron and synthesizer but is doing a
better job of integrating it.
And as I noted in the lede, if you’ve got great vocals and a solid
melody all is forgiven. The record lands its first serious blow to the heart at
Track 3 with “Cons and Clowns”.
Starting with an understated but steadily growing guitar strum,
the song opens with:
“Don't make yourself small, baby, take up space
I always wanna hear what you have to say”
And then Andrews does exactly that, wasting no time straight from
the ‘A’ section into the chorus and showcasing her signature trill. No one can
trill the high notes like Andrews: so controlled, so sweet and thoroughly
steeped in a tone so spiritually evocative it borders on necromancy.
All this comes after a couple of songs that are good but not great
and had me preparing to “meh” all over the record. With “Cons and Clowns”
I threw that two-star bias away realized I might just have a legitimately good
record on my hands. Not great, but good. (A shout out at this point to my
friend Tom who said as much to me a month ago, at a time when he had clearly
listened more closely than me).
There are some painful moments (the chirpy squeaking synth sounds (and
maybe flute) that lead off “Little Picture of a Butterfly” comes to
mind). Despite that “Little Picture…” recovers and becomes a bit of a
slow jam at a disco, with great lines like:
“Guess I should have known better
Guess I’m throwing out that sweater”.
Eat your heart out, Meryn Cadell.
By the end I had almost forgiven all the atmospheric squeaking.
Almost.
These effects are better deployed on “Outsider” which isn’t
as strong a song as “Little Picture…” but does a better job of blending
in the futuristic sounds, coming across like a reincarnated ABBA tune. One of
those melancholy ones like “The Winner Takes It All” with strangely
triumphant chords and atmospheric noises that somehow make it exhilarating to
be sad.
The record ends strong with “Hangman” which uses the word
game as a lovely springboard metaphor. Say what you will about Andrews’
production choices, she knows how to write a song, and “Hangman” has all
the things that makes her great – the thoughtful introspective thoughts,
twisted up against a pure resilience like a rising double helix of sound.
Andrews writes songs that fill you with resolution and gives you the emotional
experience of a runner’s high – weary, breathless, and elated.
And while her vocals do this on every song on the record, they
have to compete with the creative arrangements and don’t win out every time.
The juxtaposition of her pure folk vocals and those less organic additions
generate moments, but as often as not I just wanted her voice and an acoustic
guitar. The heart wants what it wants…
Best tracks: Cons and Clowns, Everyone Wants to Feel Like You Do, Hangman
The Concert – Friday, April 10 at the Biltmore, Vancouver BC
This show was a bit of a whim, when I decided at the last minute to
take Friday off and head over for a quick overnight show in neighbouring Vancouver
with my good friend and fellow music enthusiast, Casey.
I’d been to the Biltmore once before about a year ago (to see the
Handsome Family – see review at Disc 1811) so I knew to expect good
acoustics and terrible sightlines. We got there early and landed two high stools
right in front of the soundboard.
As the floor filled up it became apparent that while the sound in
that location was going to be unmatched, the sightlines were as terrible as
ever. The Biltmore has a low ceiling and as a result the stage is perforce also
low. While it didn’t help that all the tallest people there seemed to choose
the angle between me and the stage, even normal-sized humans would have blocked
most of the show.
I spent the night focused on listening and occasionally enjoying a
fleeting sighting of the singers’ head when the alternating sway of my fellow
music fans parted slightly. I suppose I could have crept forward to snap a
photo for this blog, but that wouldn’t have been authentic to my experience.
So, true to the event, this concert review features no photos.
Lou Hazel
The opening act was singer-songwriter Lou Hazel. Lou was a
delightful fellow, and his short set was a good mix of banter and folk songs, ending
with an engaging song about his dad that left me feeling like I know the man personally
(I don’t).
On one song Lou had a chorus composed of rhetorical questions to
which the enthusiastic fans shouted answers. Fun on the first chorus, but tiresome
when the antics were repeated throughout.
Courtney Marie Andrews
Andrews came on stage without fanfare and launched immediately
into “Pendulum Swing” the opening track of her new album. After a couple
more songs from that record, Andrews stopped to confirm my suspicion – she was
going to play the whole album in sequence.
As a lover of the full album experience (note: this blog) I happen
to love encountering this at a live show. While “Valentine” is not my favourite
record I appreciated her doubling down on her newest songs and also making
casual fans and dilettantes (which I am not) live the full musical experience
they should be seeking out on their own anyway.
As noted in the review above, I was not a fan of “Valentine”s
production decisions and hoped that the live version would be more organic. For
the most part it was, although Andrews’ and the band still managed to get in a
fair share of hum and buzz.
On worst offenders like “Little Picture of a Butterfly” I learned
that some of the weird sounds were from a flute (which Andrews artfully
switched to and from guitar without missing a beat). It was a bit more organic,
but still stubbornly stuck to the new sound.
The final song on the record, “Hangman” is one of my
favourites on the record, but live it got a bit overamped and the resulting
feedback buzz was, admittedly, an irritant.
As for the overall quality of the show, my “perfect audiophile”
location paid off big-time. Andrews’ vocals, so angelic through her career,
have lost nothing in either power or tone. The notes that lifted my soul and
raised the hair on my neck on her studio records did it again in the live
environment, often moreso.
The last third of the show featured a couple of songs off of her
previous albums, relatively evenly applied through her discography from “Honest
Life” forward. Standouts included “Rookie Dreaming” and “Burlap String”
but it was a good selection, although admittedly abbreviated due to the time
taken by the full-album approach (which, as noted above, I heartily endorse).
Now a note on the crowd, and since I’m about to share a couple of
bad moments, I’d like to lead with love and note that 95% of the crowd were
enthusiastic, joyful and respectful of their neighbours. Even all those tall
dudes did their best to navigate to a shared space that impacted only a small
viewing angle overall. The Biltmore attracts true music fans and there were
many there with me, enjoying the music. Love to all of these - the vast majority
of attendees.
Of course, there are always exceptions. Two people in front of me
talked nonstop through the entire first half of the set before mercifully moving
along to Parts Unknown. I couldn’t hear them but remain eternally mystified by people
who pay money to attend a live music event and then choose to talk through it.
Worse was someone who, forgoing thousands of years’ worth of
shared human understanding of the guest/host relationship shouted an insult
directed broadly at America. Andrews and her whole band are from the United
States, and while the shout was (thankfully) greeted with a dismayed murmur of
disagreement from the crowd, it still landed ill.
To Andrews’ credit, she got through the song, reminded everyone (more
gently than was deserved) that love is the way through troubled times and - in a
final message on the matter - ended the show with an acoustic rendition of “May
Your Kindness Remain”.
No matter what dark thoughts may eat away at us in times of
trouble, and no matter how hard a road we may walk, this is always good advice.
