Picking up the gong for International Artist of the Year at the recent UK Americana Awards, Arizona’s Courtney Marie Andrews came to Islington with expectations sky-high. Her latest album, May Your Kindness Remain, is her best to date — a reminder that, in the right hands, country music can be about much more than broken hearts and drinking beer.
Alas, after “seven weeks of non-stop touring”, Andrews and her four-piece band seemed a little road-weary. Songs such as set opener Long Road Back To You are beautifully crafted and perfectly sung but there’s a sluggishness to the performance. Elsewhere, This House succumbs to the kind of lyrical cliches (“this house is not much of a house, but it’s a home”) that makes much of country music so cloying.
It’s a shame because, at her best, the 27-year-old is a sensation. Not only is she in possession of a breathtakingly brilliant voice, she also has a way with a cutting lyric. “I like when I have to you call you a second time / It keeps me wondering if you are mine,” she sings on the “sarcastic love song” I’m Hurt Worse, a 21st-century alternative to Stand By Your Man.
There’s also echoes of Joni Mitchell in a free-flowing ballad dedicated to Andrews’s aunt, who fought off stage 4 cancer.
A closing flurry of the bluesy Border and the majestic May Your Kindness Remain provide a glimpse of just how good Andrews could be — if she can only bring a little more variation and energy to her live shows.
