Valentine is “a record in pursuit of love,” says Courtney Marie Andrews. But love, it turns out, “is a lot more than I gave it credit for,” she explains. “It’s built over years, it’s built with trust, with changes, it becomes something new and unrecognizable, the deeper you go.” Written at the junction of intense endings and beginnings in her life, Valentine demands more of those we love and reveals a stronger, wiser, and more clear-eyed Courtney Marie Andrews in the process. It is both lush and elemental, precise in its construction but rich with sonic and lyrical layers. In love and on Valentine, there is no quarter for empty gestures.

From her very first recordings, to her 2016’s breakthrough Honest Life, to 2020’s Grammy-nominated Old Flowers and her most recent Loose Future, Andrews has been celebrated as an artist who challenges herself, and who finds new interplays of Folk and Americana. “As a songwriter you can make the same record over and over again,” Andrews says, “and I’m not interested in that. I make records to stand alone and stand apart from each other.” Co-produced with Jerry Bernhardt and recorded almost entirely to tape, Valentine features complete in-studio performances, hinging on performance rather than perfection. “We thought a lot about Lee Hazlewood, about Big Star’s Third and Fleetwood Mac’s Tusk” says Andrews, and that constellation of stars is apparent here. Valentine feels elegant, disciplined and balanced but never cold, always vulnerable and human.

“I was in one of the darkest periods of my life, and songs were the only way I could reckon with it,” says Andrews. “I felt cursed, and the only mental cure felt like songwriting and painting.” The near-death of a loved one loomed over everything, and while that person eventually recovered from both sickness and psychosis, Andrews was more sure that death was coming than recovery. Her grief was acute, volatile. The decline coincided with a new romance, but rather than lift her up, the two emotional poles seemed to bleed into each other to sow doubt, trouble, even obsession. “I was grappling with what I felt sure was death, and with the end of that relationship,” Andrews explains, “while I was also grappling with something new but quite unstable. Here was this new relationship evolving alongside the collapse of another.”

The result was what Andrews describes as limerence, but a somehow empowered limerence: consuming and fierce, piled high with insecurity and fantasy, and filling every inch of a space she feared was hollowing out. It was painful, she says, and not far off from the pain of grief. 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.” 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.

That high-wire balance permeates Valentine, and lead single “Everyone Wants to Feel Like You Do” embodies it fully. A Petty-esque drumbeat marches under an indictment of the all-too-common type of man, the type who feels they can move through the world however they want without consequence. Here, Andrews’s singing is classic honey-and-vinegar; she may sound sweet, but rest assured you’re gonna hear about it. “It’s this funny double-edged thing,” says Andrews, “because you do want to feel like that person, but you’re not sure if you should because it’s a person so disconnected, without a care in the world or a care for other people. I played the guitar solo like I didn’t care in that song,” she continues. “I thought ‘I’m just gonna play it like I don’t give a shit what anyone else is doing.’” When Andrews sings “Don’t make yourself small, baby, take up space” on this summer’s “Cons and Clowns”, the softness in her voice lands as both a whisper and a dare. “Little Picture of a Butterfly" is another example, one where the reclamation of power in the lyrics (“Soulmates what a pretty thought / but either you do, or you do not”) mirrors the same in the music. “It’s such a trad song in a lot of ways,” says Andrews, “but we added flute, we added organ and all these Brian Wilson harmonies.” Those additions set the song alight, building on the insistent tempo and bassline and climbing to an expansive, sky-high final act.

Album closer “Hangman” opens with an echo and a note that hits like an arrow. Andrews sings insistently “tell me now, tell me now, tell me now,” but it’s not a plea, it’s a threat: I can love you with defiance, and without sacrificing who I am. It’s not “love me back”, it’s “love me or don’t.” “Keeper” is the only co-write on the record, and its backstory reads like a short film. “I was at dinner with a dear friend,” says Andrews, “and I was really going through it. I asked her if I’m a keeper, and we both just started crying. We wrote the song then and there, line by line over dinner. I went home and put a melody over it after.” There’s a desperation to “Keeper”, even in its lovely, melodic sighs. It’s insistent, worn out from chasing a love that isn’t sure.

Valentine is also Andrews’s most sonically explorative record – she plays flute, high strung guitars, myriad synths, and she draws heavy inspiration from her art outside of music. Andrews is a vivid poet and an accomplished painter, and across Valentine you can feel these disciplines interwoven, everything feeding the beauty and clarity of everything else. It’s unexpected, then, that Andrews only recently appreciated the centrality of her power as a singer. “Historically my favorite artists weren’t looked at as singers,” Andrews explains, “they were looked at as writers. And I sort of dissociated myself from singing; I chose to use it when it behooved me, but I wasn’t connected with it.” But the more interdisciplinary her work became, the more that belief seemed to dissolve. “Singing is another stroke,” she says, “the most direct line to your heart. Everything is color, texture. The way you sing can change everything, for both you and the people listening.” Andrews’s 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 moment.

Andrews is, and has always been, unafraid to say the thing. Her songs are challenging but compassionate, they welcome us in but push us to venture out. And this, in the end, may do the most to explain Valentine as both a theme and title. 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.