Listening to Courtney Marie Andrews’ Honest Life LP from last year is to get a glimpse of an alternate universe of country music that goes back to a brief fork in the road the genre experienced three decades ago; where Rodney Crowell svengali’d smart records by Rosanne Cash, say, or James McMurtry dropped his own particular kind of science, or when Lucinda Williams first began to cut a figure that casts a long, long shadow to this day. Even at its most gritty, it’s a genteel, sun-through-the-window type of thing that’s far, away from the trucks-n-shots formula mainstream country has today. What Andrews adds, though, is what makes it all more than a pose or throwback move: Her voice, which has a perfect country cruising altitude, and her songs, which feel elegantly time-worn right out of the gate.
With The Dove & The Wolf. Tickets here.