COURTNEY MARIE ANDREWS : VALENTINE

COURTNEY MARIE ANDREWS : VALENTINE

Pendulum Swing
Keeper
Cons and Clowns
Magic Touch
Little Picture of a Butterfly
Outsider
Everyone Wants To Feel Like You Do
Only the Best for Baby
Best Friend
Hangman

Label : Thirty Tigers

Release Date : January 16, 2026

Length : 35:55

Review (VinylTap) : Courtney Marie Andrews has long been celebrated as an artist who challenges herself, and who finds new interplays of Folk and Americana. Also a vivid poet and accomplished painter, she brings a multidisciplinary richness to her work that shines throughout her 9th studio album, Valentine. Co-produced with Jerry Bernhardt and recorded almost entirely to tape, the album features complete in-studio performances that prize raw performance rather than perfection. It is Andrews’s most sonically explorative record thus far – she plays flute, high strung guitars, myriad synths, and draws heavy inspiration from her art outside of music. Her voice is gorgeous and acrobatic always, but on Valentine it finds a new depth, an assertiveness that brings new dimension to its biggest anthems and its softest moments. Written during a period of profound endings and new beginnings, Valentine is a vulnerable exploration of love vs. limerence. While anticipating the imminent loss of a loved one who would eventually recover, a new but uncertain romance began to develop. Rather than lift her up, the two emotional poles seemed to bleed into each other to sow doubt, trouble, even obsession. But through her own exploration of music and art, Andrews found a way to grow stronger inside this feeling. “I didn’t want to slink into my pain, I wanted to embrace it, own it” she says. The songs that emerged are devotional in their lyrics but defiant in their energy; it’s the very sound of a woman standing in her first wisdom. With Valentine, Andrews rejects the objectification of love, the love filled with gestures and objects instead of trust, mess, and growth. In doing so, she delivers her most beautiful and loving album to date.

Review (Mojo Magazine) : Courtney Marie Andrews has always sung with wisdom beyond her years. She broke through a decade ago, exploring the shortcomings of the world with a wit that lent her Americana a millennial edge. She was only 25 then, but Honest Life was her seventh full-length and followed previous lives as preteen karaoke singer in Arizona honky tonks, frontwoman of riot grrls Massacre In A Mini Skirt and keyboardist/backing-vocalist with emo-rockers Jimmy Eat World. She’d been around the block enough times to know what her truth was, and how to sing it so it resonated. Since then, she’s serenaded America’s better side as the nation became increasingly polarized (2018’s Let Your Kindness Remain), essayed a brutal breakup with cinematic detail (2020’s Old Flowers) and extended her gifts to pop without sacrificing her integrity (2022’s Loose Future). Her eleventh album, Valentine, was written amid the turmoil of a loved one’s illness and the uncertainty of a new relationship. With her characteristic alchemic touch, however, it synthesises this turbulence into music that’s moving, beautiful and uplifting. Musically, it’s inspired by albums that almost ended careers: Big Star’s haunted Third/Sister Lovers and Fleetwood Mac’s genius folly Tusk. And while there’s nothing here that couldn’t slip onto the Radio Two playlist, this is MOR of subtle daring and innovation. The desolate Little Pictures Of A Butterfly uses new-age synth and jazz flute to evoke a post-breakup fugue state. Outsider invests the ABBA-worthy melancholy of its melody in the sort of exquisitely dreamy ambience Lindsey Buckingham used to regularly conjure for Stevie Nicks. Keeper and Only The Best, meanwhile, introduce harmonies recalling jazz-era Joni. Her plumbing of emotional depths can risk sentimentality or being lachrymose, but her unguarded honesty is disarming and affectingly real, whether the loneliness of Best Friend (longing for “someone to laugh with at bad jokes only we get”) or the existential alienation of Outsider (“How could I be an insider / when I don’t fit in?”). She still holds her world to standards it rarely meets: Cons & Clowns narrows its eyes upon the “bad people who will tear you down”, while Magic Touch finds her reasoning that “Los Angeles is such a drag … no drugs or money could fill this void inside me”. But there’s a sturdiness to Andrews’ worldview: a hopefulness that finds her advising the subject of Cons & Clowns, “Don’t make yourself small, baby – take up space”, a sense of romance that perceives the same place that “reeks of beer and piss” might also be freighted with “good times”. This is the redemption her music promises: Courtney Marie Andrews won’t sugarcoat the chips being down, but her humour and honesty guarantee there’s no-one you’d rather have in your corner.

Review (Pitchfork) : Nearly two decades into her career, Courtney Marie Andrews remains a troubadour of singular sincerity, more interested in listening to the world than begging the world to listen. She has cultivated a multi-disciplinary catalog of despair, devotion, and delicate wonder: songs that ache with intensity, poems about love and eucalyptus, paintings of women crying onto tables. At a time when artists increasingly tailor their hooks for TikTok algorithms and retrofit their images to micro-trends, she isn’t vulnerable because it sells but because it’s her modus operandi. This open-heartedness can come at a cost: Andrews is hardly naive, but her heartfelt, retro songs, which lack a protective layer of cynicism, have often betrayed the pains of overtrusting. As she puts it in a poem from her 2021 collection Old Monarch: “Is it enough to be/warm with intention?” Valentine, Andrews’ ninth LP, offers a conditional yes—not by pining for anyone in particular, but by fiercely defending the right to pine. Over the years, Andrews has garnered comparisons to fellow Arizona native Linda Ronstadt for her rich, clear tone, which can modulate from quivering vibrato to crystalline belt on a dime. From the first piercing high of opening track “Pendulum Swing,” Andrews commands her dynamic voice across Valentine, swinging into phrases with the grace and gravity of a trapeze artist. Much of Andrews’ previous album, 2022’s Loose Future, was mild and loping; on Valentine, her voice reverts to the arresting quality of earlier releases like 2018’s May Your Kindness Remain. “I am proudly wounded,” she admits, and whether she’s letting out a haunted bleat on “Keeper” or singing with feisty, spurned brightness on the country call-out “Everybody Wants to Feel Like You Do,” it’s easy to believe she’s telling the truth. Valentine is less a heartbreak record than a suite of songs about the weight of love with no place to land. Andrews loves “a heart with one foot out the door,” but she yearns for someone “to tell my deepest thoughts to,” someone who would “bring me home to mother.” Searching synths heighten the drama on the album’s slower tracks, to mixed effect: “Outsider,” an ’80s-style croon-fest, is as brooding as last call at the honky-tonk, while the plea for companionship in “Best Friend” lands just a touch corny. Andrews is gifted at writing fresh, catchy hooks, and “Only the Best for Baby,” anchored by an open-D ostinato, proves she can write riffs just as satisfying as her vocal melodies. Because she can sound mournful even on upbeat songs, ballads tend to slip into melodrama. But when Andrews finds solid grooves to express her bittersweet optimism, Valentine rocks. Andrews may sing about loneliness, but she conjures a communal sound: lush harmonies, punchy background vocals, twinkling high-strung guitars, and a suite of vintage synths like the Farfisa and the Solina create a sound that sounds far larger than the trio who crafted it (Andrews, alongside co-producer Jerry Bernhardt, and Grizzly Bear drummer Chris Bear). The production is blissful, flowing from the same mystical spring as recent records from Madison Cunningham and Hannah Cohen. On “Magic Touch,” you can hear the influence of Lee Hazlewood in the witchy, minor-key swell of the chorus; on “Little Picture of a Butterfly,” a driving, theatrical build-up collapses into an ambient outro, punctuated by fluttering high-pitched flutes, a delightful flourish made even more delightful when you learn it’s Andrews herself, playing for the first time since fifth grade. Valentine sometimes lacks the concrete, colorful descriptions that once enriched Andrews’ songwriting with a sense of place. On past releases, she has evoked the “Red Roof Inn” and the “Raging River Bar,” speaking directly to “Michael” or “Jerry” or “the prince of Thailand.” On Valentine, it’s a rarer treat to encounter Andrews “waiting by this Hollywood pool like a sad bird of paradise,” “driving around in a red Corvette,” or receiving a father’s blessing “in a parked car with the engine on.” Often, she is most present in metaphors, while the flesh-and-blood Andrews grows more elusive than we’ve come to expect. Perhaps her form of self-preservation is to document the process of learning more than sharing the details. On Valentine, she seems ready to offer more of herself—but she’s guarding herself more tightly, too.

Review (Old Grey Cat) : Ride the wild algorithm: Alongside the tinpot despot and football calls/complaints, “no-skip” albums are suddenly a hot topic within the realm of my social media. My hunch, and it’s just a hunch, is that it’s a term devised by (relative to me) young ‘uns molded by playlists, not LPs. They expect bangers sans mash and gravy. Some songs smack and thwack from the first bell, of course, with infectious hooks paired to mighty jabs and body shots—in the parlance of the moment, they slap. But, and this is where the transition from sales to streaming has bruised the listening experience, not every track should hit you upside the head. Some squeeze the heart, others speak to the soul. Good albums take the listener on a journey. The latest long player from Courtney Marie Andrews, Valentine, is a great example. Throughout, the songs play off of and build upon one another; they’re pieces of a sonic jigsaw puzzle that only reveals itself once snapped together. When she announced the project on Instagram, the singer-songwriter explained that it was “born out of limerence—a plea for love. Valentines are surface level. Turns out love is a lot more than a box of chocolates. I have learned this lesson over and over throughout my life and work.” Last week, she shared that “I wrote this work in a very dark period of my life, and in a dark period of the world, but the best thing about darkness is realizing our capacity for hope. I am very proud of this album, and I believe this has carried it to your ears. The fact that I was able to make these songs through such turbulent times is proof of hope, of love. Valentine is ultimately a person in pursuit of love, the real thing, the best friend, the connection, the self-recognition, the brighter day.” The Bandcamp description further explains that “Andrews navigated the near-death of a loved one, the end of a major relationship, and the intensity of a new romance. Rather than retreat, she poured the turmoil into songwriting and art, creating music that is both devotional and defiant.” Valentine travels through metaphoric dark nights and overcast days, in other words, though several songs leap from the speakers as if a god ray cutting through the clouds. Others hang back, biding their time. (In some respects, the album plays like an introvert’s thesis on love and heartache.) “Pendulum Swing,” which opens the 10-track set, is a dramatic ode about the figurative wrecking ball that sometimes swings through life, while “Keeper” questions and celebrates commitment. “Cons and Clowns” is one of those aforementioned god rays; it pays homage to the artists who walk among us. “Magic Touch,” on the other hand, isn’t a tribute to tactile sensations but to the way those special to us make us feel inside. “Little Picture of a Butterfly” digs into the cracked cocoon of a love gone wrong; that its melody conjures Kris Kristofferson’s “Help Me Make It Through the Night” is a brilliant, if perverse, touch. It also explains “Outsider,” about fearing the emotional tumult that every relationship worth having threatens. Who wants to risk the hurt? “Everyone Wants to Feel Like You Do” expands upon that vibe, both envying and mocking those who remain “detached and cool”; that it features an emotive guitar solo from Andrews only makes it that much better. “Only the Best for Baby” is a slyly sarcastic confessional that’s simultaneously self-deprecating (“I will settle for your crumbs”) and revelatory (“I am falling too fast for you/I am showing my cards/Wondering if I’m a fool”). “Best Friend,” for its part, finds her yearning for a close confidant to spill her soul to, while the haunting “Hangman” asks her significant other to spell out his feelings. Andrews and co-producer Jerry Bernhardt recorded Valentine over 10 days in L.A., playing all instruments themselves sans the drums, which were thumped by Chris Bear. The songs share a pronounced pop-rock feel (think Big Star, Tusk-era Fleetwood Mac, and—as the album cover indicates—Hasten Down the Wind-era Linda Ronstadt) that includes subtle synths and flute (yes, flute!); they’re far from the fresh-faced Americana that made up Honest Life, though the overall sound exists in the same zip code as Old Flowers and Loose Future. In short, while love may not be a box of chocolates, Valentine is a no-skip album that resonates like gentle feedback through the soul. It’s well worth repeated plays.