Q&A: Endings, Beginnings and Transformations in Courtney Marie Andrews’ ‘Valentine’
INTERVIEW
INTERVIEW
☆ BY STEWART SHORT ☆
Photo Credit: Wyndham Garnett
COURTNEY MARIE ANDREWS IS STILL BREAKING NEW GROUND—The multi-hyphenate artist unveils her latest album Valentine today. Her seventh album to date, this latest work comes just over three years after 2022’s Loose Future, and follows hot on the heels of Love is a Dog That Bites When It’s Scared, her second poetry collection published this past summer by Simon & Schuster. Valentine is yet another profound work from Andrews, as she dives headfirst into the depths and nuances of love, heartache, and the gamut of emotion in between.
The depth and range of Andrews’s artistry are once again on full display, as she takes listeners on an emotional journey that blends introspective, vulnerable songwriting with an enthralling complementary sonic backdrop. The two blend together seamlessly, offering listeners a richly textured portrait of a particular period in the artist’s life, while also invoking universal feelings and themes about love and the human condition. Recorded in a performance-based process and a predominantly singular vocal take, the album exhibits a tangible artistry alongside touches of sonic exploration that work in tandem in a record that feels both fresh and timeless.
Luna Collective sat down with Andrews to talk about the writing and recording process on Valentine, which is out now via Thirty Tigers.
Photo Credit: Wyndham Garnett
LUNA: It's been three years since your last record, and you've done some incredible work in your other artistic disciplines with poetry and artwork since then. What was the creative spark that kick started this next chapter of your music?
ANDREWS: I've been saying that it was derived from a really intense point of my life where I was producing quite a lot of work in all the mediums as a sort of way to ground myself. I was just making a lot of work, and then at the end, I was like, “Oh, this is the story.” Basically, it was a really intense time of beginnings and endings, and I was caretaking a family member who helped raise me, while simultaneously starting the beginnings of a very intense relationship that was very rocky, and so it was like me contending with both my past and my future. You know, light stuff.
LUNA: The emotional core of the album is gripping and so powerful. There's love, there's heartbreak, there's all of the effects and everything in between. It's all of those things at once and overlapping. Can you talk about finding that ethos for this record?
ANDREWS: Yeah, like I said, I wrote the songs during this really troubling period, and then when it came time to put them all down, I was like, “Oh, this, this story has an arc.” The beginning is about falling in love, and then it goes haywire by side A, which is “Little Picture of a Butterfly,” and then by Side B, it's like, “Oh, what are these patterns in myself that have led a thing like this to go so haywire,” and so Side B is exploring the past.
LUNA: That's something I've always admired about your work; you have such an appreciation for the depth of nuance when it comes to humans and human emotion. In a simpler piece of art, there's love, there's heartbreak, they're simplified versions of it, but you explore all of the complications and forms these emotions take. Can you talk about that aspect of your writing?
ANDREWS: I'm really fascinated by human emotion. I guess maybe in another life I might have been a psychologist or something. I really love human stories. The bright and dark sides of humans are ever fascinating to me. I feel like being a songwriter, and all the songwriters that I'm drawn to are ones that are sort of story archeologists, human archeologists. I think in some ways it's like an attempt to get closer to myself by mining and crafting these feelings; it's like revealing the subconscious. And I do believe that we're all connected in some ways, so when you reveal your own subconscious, I feel like you're revealing many others’ subconscious.
LUNA: The instrumentation on this album taps into those subconscious feelings and explores them, and it goes in tune with those emotional ebbs and flows. Can you talk about finding the sound for this album?
ANDREWS: Jerry [Bernhardt] and I definitely had some reference points. I was really obsessed by Big Star's Third, purely because it was this desperate plea for wherever he was at. I just thought that that mania was really interesting. During that time, I felt very intense, and I was like, “I want to capture those feelings in performance.” As far as sonic inspirations, I think Fleetwood Mac is endlessly interesting to study. We did a lot of Varispeed instruments. Varispeed on the tape machine, if you're not aware, you can slow it or speed it to create a lower or higher sound. We did a lot of that, and created depth of sound. It's very layered. That was the intention. And it's performance-based. The whole record is actually one vocal take straight through, except for one single line, which the engineer had to punch in live, everything else is a live performance, top to bottom.
LUNA: That's incredible.
ANDREWS: That was just like being unafraid of imperfection. In the era of being perfect, it was a study – “We're all musicians here. How can we capture the humanity?”
LUNA: There's an added dimension to the art when you can see the fingerprints in it.
ANDREWS: Exactly, and it's not muddied up by edits.
LUNA: Speaking of those sonic touches on the album, one of the singles you've released already – “Cons and Clowns” – deals with self expression and self acceptance, and you have this added dimension of you playing the flute on that song, and it adds this heightened emotional element. Can you talk about that track and playing the flute on it?
ANDREWS: It was a complete coincidence that the flute should come, but as I view back on the record, like I said, the Side B of this record and in “Cons and Clowns,” as well, it's like a letter to a loved one, but also like a letter to myself. Side B talks so much about this pain of child-self, and I, just purely out of fun, brought this flute that I haven't played since the fifth grade down, just to mess around and see what it sounded like. And it ended up being perfect in the track to us, and it was just super fun. Looking back on it, it's like, wow, how interesting to have played this thing that I only played really in childhood, while I'm contending with these childhood pains.
LUNA: It brings everything out in a very specific way. Another place where that flute comes into play is on “Little Picture of a Butterfly.” It has this crescendo and that emotional arc, and the flute really ties that together, especially towards the end of the song. Can you talk about following that arc in that song?
ANDREWS: That song was fun to make, because, I think, in its true form, without any of the instrumentation, it's quite a traditional sounding song. We could have easily just dressed it up in all the dressings of a traditional song. It was really fun to be like, “How can we make this a journey?” We just got experimental, a bit new wave-y in the beginning, and then broke the dream. I love to break the dream literally and sonically. I think it's really fun when you use music to emphasize this feeling that you're having. And we really did that in that song – the arc matches the lyrics.
LUNA: You know, one of the things that's just stuck with me through the whole record is the line, “Guess I should have known better, guess I'm throwing out that sweater.” The way I first found your music was during the pandemic, I had worn out all my John Prine records and was diving into the algorithm, like, “I need to find more that sounds like this.” You blend those emotional explorations with these specific moments and imagery so well, in a very evocative way. Another line that comes to mind is on “Magic Touch,” where you refer to yourself as a sad bird of paradise, and it's just all these interesting moments and images throughout the songs. Can you talk about that aspect of your songwriting?
ANDREWS: First and foremost, I was always interested in lyrics. When I listened to music as a young woman, that's what I heard first. And the core of my love is writing. I love, especially with a writer like John Prine, I love writers that write songs that are both personal but somehow universal as well. I think I'm always trying to attain that level of writing where you can somehow be like, “Well, this is definitely written about John Prine’s life, but it's also something that I feel too somehow.” I love imagery, but I also love simplicity, so I'm constantly trying to dance between those two things.
LUNA: We touched on your other work in poetry and painting, and obviously your career as a songwriter and a musician. When it comes to those different disciplines, do you find they've influenced each other? Do the sensibilities all go hand in hand? Do you discover something in one and then it influences the others? How does that dynamic work for you?
ANDREWS: They all somehow remain separate, but the story is always the same. What I found when I was just writing songs, which I did for a majority of my career, is that I was running out of ways to say things, and I would write the same songs over and over again. What was really beautiful about discovering art and poetry as a means of expression and as a means of becoming a child again in my creativity is that there are now multiple ways to tell a story. Once I come back to writing after painting, I can tell a new story because I've found multiple ways to tell it. So I would say that the stories are the same, but it looks different.
LUNA: You'll be hitting the road soon, first in Europe, and then some dates in the US. How are you feeling about taking this new record on the road with you?
ANDREWS: I'm really excited. More than ever I appreciate and honor live performance. I think it's very integral in these strange, disconnected times to be in a room experiencing music, and to perform music for people just feels ever more meaningful.
Photo Credit: Wyndham Garnett
