How Courtney Marie Andrews learned to let the light in

thefader.com:

Courtney Marie Andrews didn’t expect to be nominated for a Grammy, and she definitely never expected her first Grammys would look like last year’s. “The one time I was nominated, it was a Zoom call,” she chuckles. “It was hilariously what you would not want for your first Grammys.” Her sixth album, Old Flowers — a mournful and unsparing country record about a shattering break-up — had been shortlisted for Best Americana Album.

And while the nod itself was a shock and the night not what people have in mind when they imagine an awards ceremony, it was all oddly fitting. “In some ways, it was perfect for Old Flowers.

It should have been quite up-close and personal. I had a few friends over for an outdoor fire and we celebrated together. That was its own sort of beauty.” Old Flowers may have been the apotheosis of this peculiar beauty, an album so intimate and delicately rendered that listening to it felt at points like eavesdropping.

But Andrews had been working in that deeply melancholy atmosphere since releasing her first albums as a teenager. It’s what makes her new album, Loose Future, such a revelation.