Courtney Marie Andrews at Bush Hall

Courtney Marie Andrews
Joana Serrat
Bush Hall, 4 September 2017

It's always worth the long journey over to Shepherd's Bush for the lovely intimate atmosphere of the tiny Bush Hall. The sound is always great here, it's easy to have a good view of the stage and the audiences tend to be warm and friendly. The perfect place to see acclaimed country/folk singer Courtney Marie Andrews then, whose album, Honest Life, has been a real joy to me this year.

First up though a very pretty but slightly disheveled young woman creeps on to the stage wearing a rather worn-looking gold velvet jacket and cowboy boots. Turns out she's Joana Serrat, a Spanish singer-songwriter who has already made waves in her homeland with three successful Americana-style albums and a third on the way.

Aside from an attractive Spanish lilt to her voice, it's hard to believe that Serrat isn't from America because she has a beautiful country noir feel to her songs that evokes those dark desert highways the Eagles loved to sing about, yet somehow sounds much more authentic. She also has a attractive breathy tone to her voice that manages to rise above the sometimes twangy and sometimes gently strumming acoustics. She fits on the bill perfectly and the crowd seem enraptured (quite a few run to the back to get a signed CD at the end). I have a feeling she's going to get a lot of attention with her new LP, Dripping Springs, which is out at the end of September.

When Courtney Marie Andrews, the 26-year-old singer-songwriter from Phoenix, Arizona, emerges with her bell-sleeved mini-dress and long-fringed hair, it's hard not to think of Joni Mitchell, especially when she straps on her acoustic guitar. But really that's where the comparison ends because Andrews has more in common with the thoughtful and melodic country of singers like Emmylou Harris and Ryan Adams (who of course endorsed her latest album). 

She begins the show with one of the best tracks from the new record, Rookie Dreaming. The song is more rocking than I expected as she has a band with her (consisting of drums, bass, guitar and keyboards with a scenic cactus-filled desert-view surround) but her voice is immediately impressive: strong and soaring yet full of lament. 

After winning us over with one of the favourites from the album she quickly moved on to newer

material, playing the grooving Sea Town from her just-released single. "Ain't nothing gonna turn me around," she sings determinedly and sounding more upbeat and positive than ever. It's a great song and shows her songwriting is getting stronger and stronger.

Tonight's show is actually filled with new tracks that she is planning on recording for her next album. There's a great up tempo one called Buffalo which she tells us is about "the gentrification of American neighbourhoods",  a sweet foot-tapping number called Kindness Of Strangers, and another she says she wrote at a truck stop the day after Trump got elected, a rally song called Heart And Mind for women who feel dismissed and objectified, defiantly singing "when you feel weak your power is in your heart and your mind."

One of my favourites of the new tunes though is a quiet acoustic number called Rough Around The Edges, where her surprisingly powerful voice fills the whole of the beautiful Bush Hall as she laments "Don't feel like picking up the damn phone today" (we've all been there). There were others too, in fact a good half of the show was given over to new songs (which is such an unusual thing these days in concerts) but if they are any indication I think the follow-up to Honest Life is going to be even better.

In the middle of the show the rest of the band left the stage and she gave us a few numbers alone on just her acoustic guitar. These included two tracks from her just re-released 2013 album, On My Page. One, Woman Of Many Colours, a song inspired by her mother, and another written for her uncle while he was in prison, Paintings From Michael, which she performed on the piano and admitted she rarely does live.

The band returned for more songs from the new album with Table For One, How Quickly The Heart Mends and Irene, in particular getting a fantastic response from the crowd. But it was a new track (or old, as she told us it had been knocking around for some time until she put it on her new single), that floored me, a song called Near You. A slow burning, Neil Young-esque tale that recalled both Angel Olsen and Emmylou Harris at their moodiest. "I'm not asking for the moon" she crooned as the song steadily built and the guitars and Andrews voice grew louder and more emotional. It was incredible. I have a feeling this song will grow and grow into something really special live. It is already a huge wow to hear live.

At the end Andrews told us how years ago she toured Europe with a backpack full of merchandise and ended up at Bush Hall as a support act. That show got her a booking agent and obviously led to bigger things as years later she's back as the headline act for two sold out London shows. It's been a long, hard road to get to where she is but I'm kind of glad she hasn't been an overnight success because it shows in the songs, which are full of depth, truth, vulnerability and power: she feels the real deal and you know, as good as it is, the best is yet to come.