COURTNEY MARIE ANDREWS - MAY YOUR KINDNESS REMAIN
05/04/2018
There are tall weathervanes in my musical listening. They tell me which way the wind blows. David Adams is one such and when he dropped the name Courtney Marie Andrews, a while back, it stuck in my mind. When the new record May Your Kindness Remain landed, the weathervane moved and I went to hear how the wind was blowing.
Oh my, she’s good. I am hearing echoes of Emmylou Harris, Linda Ronstadt and Joan Baez. The voice almost lilts too close to that country that I don’t like but like Iris DeMent you have to go with those tinges. Then Andrews underlays the songs with dirty distorted guitar sounds and there is a reminder of Maria McKee’s cow punk Lone Justice days.
In the end it is the songwriting that lifts Andrews above the crowd. There is a poetic flair that can all at once create a real sense of place, put your finger on the pulse of culture and dive deep into the introspective soul.
In a world that has been more than a little depressing in the past year or two, we get an album that can be lonely and despairing. Yet, in the despairing there is a looking right through all the surface pseudo-fix of wealth and materialism and a trawl further down for the unseen things that really matter; love and kindness. Kindness appears in two titles, the title track itself and Kindness of Strangers.
In the end Courtney Marie Andrews is a bit of a weathervane herself. The Gospel According To… Ms Andrews is that, in these dark times we find ourselves in, we need to lean in on personal love and communal kindness. The stories in these songs give a narrative to find catharsis and hope in.
It’s a keeper. Thank you Mr Adams!
Thank you Mr. Stockman, great live too, saw her last time around in Whelans and she is back later this month
Posted by: David Adams | 05/04/2018 at 02:48 PM