Album Review: Courtney Marie Andrews, 'Loose Future'

In five years, after we’ve had time to rebuild our lives, how will we look back on these years lost to a global pandemic? We may be full of anger, regret, sorrow, but perhaps we’ll see that this time also brought us closer to ourselves and to our most immediate family. For singer-songwriter Courtney Marie Andrews, it might be her new album, Loose Future (out this week on Fat Possum Records), that she remembers.

Retreating to a seaside shack in Cape Cod at the height of the pandemic, Andrews had the time to get off the road and refocus her thoughts and songwriting.

She wrote a song a day, explored painting and poetry. She found herself and reclaimed her creativity after a grueling number of years touring at the top of the Americana world, including earning a Grammy from her 2020 album, Old Flowers.

Some have mentioned that Loose Future is a post-breakup album, an album of falling into new love, but Andrews is such a good songwriter that anyone will find something to love here. Maybe some of that comes from the fact that Andrews centers herself in each song. After so much time alone, she really knows where to find herself.

Thus, the album is a searing, personal look at a time of isolation and uncertainty, as it crystallizes into a new vision of self-worth.

Co-produced with fellow songwriter Sam Evian, featuring folks like Josh Kaufman of Bonny Light Horseman and Grizzly Bear’s Chris Bear, Loose Future is lush with dense arrangements (strings, percussion, pedal steel, vocal harmonies), ringed with beautiful guitar work. But it’s Andrews’ voice that you’ll remember, as clear as a stream, ringing like the echoes off a mountain, infused with the kind of hard-won determination that she’s earned over these past few years.

###

Loose Future is available HERE.