Description
COURTNEY MARIE ANDREWS has spent the past decade or so fine tuning and revising her rootsy singer-songwriter formula, to great results: See the gospel-soul inflections of 2018’s May Your Kindness Remain or the sparse heartbroken folk of her last album, 2020’s Old Flowers. The former LP helped land Andrews on stage with Dolly Parton in 2019, singing “9 to 5” alongside Sheryl Crow and Maggie Rogers, while the latter earned Andrews her first Grammy nomination.
But all of Andrews’ many shades and influences have never sounded more fully encapsulated and at ease with one another as they do on Loose Future, the singer’s radically openhearted and stunning new album. The album feels like a series of warm embraces: of Andrews’ past musical selves, of her past mistakes and misfortunes, and of her bright, beautifully uncertain present and future. “Life is better without plans,” as she sings on “Older Now.”
The singer-songwriter is, for now, done dwelling on her wounds, turning them into tortured statements of heartbreak and desolation; she’s younger than that now. Loose Future positions Andrews between Waxahatchee and Angel Olsen, a triumvirate of singer-songwriters finding new alleyways in and out of familiar territory. These 10 absorbing songs, likewise, are testaments to remaining in motion.
