Album Review: Courtney Marie Andrews - 'Old Flowers'
Not all breakup albums are bitter. On Old Flowers, Courtney Marie Andrews’ compassion shines through.
“If I could go back now, I’d pick you wildflowers,” she sings on the opening track, “Burlap String,” unafraid to admit her regrets. But she continues:
“I’ve grown cautious, I’ve grown up, I’m a skeptic of love.”
When Andrews’ long-term relationship began, she was a mere 19 years old -- not even old enough to drink -- but when it ended she found herself a 29-year-old, notably accomplished musician with only memories of two-step dancing in Nashville bars and drinking cheap wine under the moonlit Venice Beach with the man she loved.
“On New Year’s Day, 2018, a great horned owl dropped dead at my exes’ feet in my mother’s yard,” she wrote about the final months of her relationship. “It felt like a daunting omen, ushering on change for the both of us. We were distraught. We couldn’t afford the taxidermy, so we placed it in a big blue plastic garbage bin. Now it felt so cheap, that mystic creature in a plastic coffin. That’s how love feels sometimes – like we don’t serve it the ending it deserves.”
Andrews took to her piano to grapple with these feelings, and has created an album that speaks to some of the hardest truths of love.
“When I wake up in the morning next to him it makes me wanna cry,” she sings on “Guilty,” “but I cannot bring myself to let it go and say goodbye, cause I know it’d hurt you too.”
She stumbled upon a universal reality that most of us who have internalized a heartbreak come to (often regretfully) realize: the end of a love is always messy, and, yet, how wonderful it is to carry those memories with you when you go.
“I was writing a lot after we broke up as a healing technique, preserving each memory like an emotional archaeologist. Late one night, I woke up from a dream where I was searching for him, my ex, at a carnival. It was so vivid. I woke myself up to write a song on my piano,” she said. The song would become “Carnival Dream” on the record.
“The next morning, he reached out to me for the first time in months. We went out, had a drink, caught up, and he told me that the hardest part about our separation was a reoccurring nightmare where he searched for me at a carnival. In that moment, I knew, humans have ways of connecting beyond words and touch. I truly believe that. We had the same dream, without seeing each other for months.”
Some may call it destiny. Andrews might disagree, but remains hopeful.
“What a goddamn mess, fate is such a joke,” she sings on “Together or Alone,” “and I hope one day we’ll be laughing together or alone”
For Andrews, there’s beauty to be found in an aching heartbreak, and an appreciation to be recognized for the time you had with someone, regardless of the circumstances. People come, people go -- you never know when your paths might diverge.
“I hope you find what it is you’re looking for,” she continues in the song. “I’m just proud to have loved you enough to ask for more.”
Indeed, the overarching themes of Old Flowers are of forgiveness, truth, kindness, and growth. There is no spite, there are no burned bridges, only a woman who has found that life is taking her down a different road than she originally envisioned.
“Even with all the mystic symbolism that year presented, this is an age-old story I can’t make up,” she wrote. “We fall in love, we grow up, we change, and they don’t change with us.”
“Old Flowers is about heartbreak. There are a million records and songs about that, but I did not lie when writing these songs. This album is about loving and caring for the person you know you can’t be with. It’s about being afraid to be vulnerable after you’ve been hurt. It’s about a woman who is alone, but okay with that, if it means truth.
“I hope you laugh, I hope you care. I hope your days are even better than the ones that we shared,” she sings on “Ships in the Night,” the final track on the record. Her harmonies blend beautifully, but are detached just enough to sound as though Andrews is singing with that new woman that is alone, that woman that is her.
“And I hope that you find love, settle down somewhere new,” she finished her portrait of healing, “and I hope that this world sees who I see in you.”
Words by Allison Rapp