Courtney Marie Andrews burst into my consciousness when I heard a track from her breakthrough album 'Honest Life'. The song was 'How Quickly Your Heart Mends' her witty heart-worn tale of surviving love and finding life.
'Honest Life' is an album packed with songwriting of the highest calibre that speaks of the years that Courtney Marie has spent as a travelling musician playing with bands and as a solo artist building her skill and craft. Amazingly a veteran of 6 self funded albums by the time of her breakthrough she'd been touring for ten years.
Listening to the older work there has been a astonishing refinement of her songwriters craft, her confidence as a writer and that key skill of telling her stories straight and connecting with her audience.
Her previous full length album 'On My Page' mapped a route to 'Honest Life' with key songs 'Blue Woman' and 'Woman of Many Colours' still mainstays of her live set and tales that sit well with her later output. That said 'Honest Life' is a huge step forward in her writing and in the realisation of her muse. There's a brevity and directness to the songs and a honesty in the delivery that pushed open the door to that wider audience that she so thoroughly deserves.
What brought about that change, that clarity? I'd contend that the limited release 2014 mini album 'Leuven Letters' played a large part in leading Courtney Marie to the directness of 'Honest Life'. The six tracks she recorded in Belgium contain only one song from 'Honest Life' - the aforementioned 'How Quickly Your Heart Mends' which encapsulates the new pared back direct voice that points towards the sound and honesty that makes 'Honest Life' the important album it is. The backstory to 'Leuven Letters' is that it was written and recorded in the aftermath of a relationship breakup. The songs work as a group describing the confusion, the hurt, the frustration, the yearning and the keening heartbreak of love along with the redemptive quality of rebirth as a careworn experienced liver of life. It closes with the heartfelt 'A Song for Amy Ross' a song about the loss of a friend that may sit outside the canon of break-up songs that precedes it but shares that direct way of telling the story that is as real and affectionate. It too is about unexpected loss and the hurt the sheering of a friendship to an abrupt end.
'Leuven Letters' is a exceptional suite of songs and maps out clearly the template that Courtney Marie so assuredly realised on 'Honest Life'. It deserves to be seen as the pivotal work that it clearly is paving the way from the old Courtney Marie to the new and playing its part in showcasing her voice both vocally and in the words and music that those of us who have fallen for her spell love so much.
https://courtneymarieandrews.bandcamp.com/album/leuven-letters
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