Nick Bollinger lends an ear to the Trump-era country of Courtney Marie Andrews.
Courtney Marie Andrews Photo: supplied
Courtney Marie Andrews has the right initials for her chosen musical genre.
CMA also stands for Country Music Association, whose CMA Awards are one of the genre’s big annual industry events. And if there’s any justice, this album should be up for one - though realistically it’s probably not in the running. It’s got more grit than glamour, and takes its cues from the kind of earthy, red-dirt country you used to get from artists like Emmylou Harris but don’t find much of on the country charts nowadays.
May Your Kindness Remain Photo: supplied
Andrews is 27, originally from Phoenix, Arizona and this is her sixth album. It is sonically richer than anything she’s done before, thanks in part to producer Mark Howard, who worked on Emmylou Harris’s innovative Wrecking Ball album, which these expansive guitar-scapes sometimes resemble. Andrews’ voice can sound a bit like Emmylou’s as well. At least, that’s when she starts out. Only she can build from there to something more fearsome that you’re ever likely to find on an Emmylou record. The title song is a case in point. It starts out a slow, stately ballad, and could have stayed that way, if it didn’t just keep on growing; first with a rumbling bed of feedback, building to a climactic chorus in which Andrews changes into a soaring gospel gear that’s less Emmylou and more Aretha.
Kindness is not just a word that recurs in these songs, but also the nub of a question. Where has kindness gone in a middle America where homes, jobs and traditions are being swept aside with a chorus of ‘Gonna wash this rust belt new’?
There’s a spectacular group of new American female singer-songwriters making great records at the moment, which includes Lucy Dacus, Jay Som, Big Thief’s Andrianne Lenker and Soccer Mommy’s Sophie Allison. Courtney Marie Andrews is part of that generation, but her country roots place her in a slightly different tradition. She fills her verses with concrete details and credible, carefully-drawn characters, inevitably from the American working class. At times that can make her seem old-fashioned and perhaps a little sentimental, even where her songcraft is unassailable.
It’s part of the country tradition to be prolific, and Andrews is certainly that, in addition to being a tireless touring performer. If the pace of her output accounts for some unevenness in her writing, the best of her songs are terrific, and May Your Kindness Remain has the most consistent serving of them so far.
May Your Kindness Remain is available on Fat Possum
