Courtney Marie Andrews

Venue:

Gorilla, Manchester

Date: 22/02/2026

Courtney Marie Andrews has been making music since her teens but her breakthrough record was the wonderful ‘Honest Life’ which, as she mentioned tonight, will be ten years old this year. It was a record that indicated a rare talent with the potential of major success. That has eluded her, but she has retained a strong fanbase throughout that time. This is the third time I have seen her in concert and each time it has been in an intimate venue of maybe 500-600 capacity – no more, no less. A lot of water has flowed under the bridge over that decade. If her songs are anything to go by she’s gone through a degree of emotional ups and downs as she’s moved from her mid-twenties to her mid-thirties. She’s channelled those experiences to create a quietly impressive body of work – four albums have followed ‘Honest Life’, each of them offering her particular brand of heart-on-sleeve songs dealing with the excitement and heartbreak of love sought, gained and lost.

And judging from this performance she has matured as a performer. On both previous occasions I saw her she was excellent, but there was a diffidence about her onstage. There is still some of that, but this was the most comfortable and relaxed I have seen her. Here was an artist who knows she has a strong body of work behind her and is confident in her work.

That confidence is illustrated by the fact that the first part of her set – Act One, as she dubbed it, was a complete performance of her new album, ‘Valentine’. Increasingly I love it when an artist does this. Why on earth shouldn’t and wouldn’t they want to play the songs currently in their heads? Apart from anything else invariably there is an enthusiasm and quality in the performance that can be lacking if they are just trotting out fan favourites because they know that’s what people want. And certainly, there was a real fire and attack in her and her band’s performances of songs like ‘Hangman’ and ‘Everyone Wants to Feel Like You Do’, and a depth of emotion in songs like ‘Outsider’ and ‘Best Friend’. So far the album hadn’t fully convinced me; but hearing it live, as a complete suite of songs that flowed perfectly into each other, it absolutely did.

‘Act Two’ then featured songs from her earlier albums. ‘Old Flowers’ – for my money her best record since ‘Honest Life’ featured well, with superb performances of ‘It Must Be Someone’s Else’s Fault’ and ‘Break the Spell’. Her three-piece band , in particular Jerry Bernhardt, who co-produced ‘Valentine’ on electric guitar and keyboards were great throughout, and Andrews herself contributed some excellent acoustic and electric guitar, keyboards, and even a bit of flute.

Looking at her setlist on the tour so far, she’s been mixing the second part of the set up from night to night. Here, she finished with a solo acoustic encore of two songs from ‘Honest Life’ – ‘Irene’ and ‘Rookie Dreaming’. They were gorgeous. But it is that full run through of ‘Valentine’ that will live in my memory and absolutely makes this show worth your time and money if you can get to one of the remaining dates (though there are only three more in the UK, all this week.)

The support, incidentally, was Brown Horse, who hail from Norwich. I confess I arrived in time to only catch the second half of their set, but their music had an attractive laid back country rock feel and sounded worth exploring further. Here they were a three piece but apparently the full band when they tour in their own right is five players and a little more expansive than it was here. A particular shoutout to Emma Tovell who played some lovely pedal steel that added real colour to the songs I heard.

The audience:

I am sure this observation has been made here before about any number of Afterword- friendly artists, but it must be slightly strange and even depressing to be a performer in your twenties or thirties and to know that your audience is largely (though not entirely) made up of people old enough to be your parents or even grandparents. That was certainly the case here.

It made me think..

That the new album is much better than I had given it credit for so far.

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