This music not only stretches the boundaries of what a string band should sound like; it pushes indie-folk about as far as it can go. When one reviews the instruments played – three fiddlers, cello, banjo, guitar, bass and plenty of harmony vocals, it would suggest a bluegrass or modern folk approach but another look reveals one of today’s most imaginative producers, Sam Kassirer, adding piano, synthesizers and keyboards. And yes, there is a drummer too, the engineer D. James Goodwin. Just as Kassirer has done for many bands like Lake Street Dive, Dustbowl Revival’s recent album as probably the most current example, he radically transforms the sound of Laura Cortese & the Dance Cards band’s for Bitter Better from.
These string instruments are bowed, plucked, and pounded percussively in every conceivable way one could play them. With Kassirer’s grooves, synths, loops and hooks the album sounds by turns ethereal, and dance-worthy. Little did Cortese, or anyone for that matter, know the album would be released during the worst health pandemic in over a century. Keep that in mind as you glean some of the quotes that will follow. The album was always intended to be an uplifter and may serve that purpose in an even bigger way now. “Everything is so heavy in the world right now,” Cortese says, who’s been living in Belgium the past two years. “When someone comes to our show, listens to this album, or hears one of the songs, I want it to feel like relief and release.”
Cortese claims that this would be an antidote to social confinement. She claims that her adopted home, Belgium, where the core album was recorded, is a country already steeped in social distancing. Consider this statement, “Belgium, my new home, is #1 for suicide in Western Europe. They keep a lot of distance socially,” she says. “People meet up with friends in bars instead of their homes. It takes a long time to make real friendships. Trying to integrate gave me new perspective on what it feels like to be an outsider”. Thus, the remedy is to dance and to let it all go. That’s why she shunned the usual rules in favor of just making interesting music. It’s like one big pot stirred with string music, classical strains, electronica, pop, and bluegrass quality harmonies.
The song that inspired the album title is “Treat You Better,” about the complexities of long-term love, obligation and healthy versus unhealthy dynamics. “I started writing this a few years after I got divorced and was pretty disillusioned about finding a partner. I was asking some older friends — couples that from the outside seemed to have healthy and lovely long-term relationships — questions about their relationships. I found this coincidental link between many of the couples. “Where the Fox Hides” is a response to how isolated many people are in our modern, digital world and the loneliness it engenders. “From the Ashes” was a reaction to the devastating California wildfires. Cortese, originally from San Francisco, was inspired by the resilience of friends who lost their homes and drew from her childhood experiences to write this autobiographical song.
“Corduroy” is about a “hipster who tries too hard,” and the haunting “Young Man” was written on one of the three antique harmoniums (also known as pump organs or field organs) in Cortese’s Belgian home. Reading stories of chaplains and their harmoniums in the world wars — stories which often had tragic endings — the song evokes European battlefields and a sense of wartime history and loss. “Daylight” is a goodbye to her Boston home and a note to her friends to stay positive following the 2016 presidential election (which seems like such a distant memory now that we’re in this global health crisis).
Kassirer helped her sift through over 40 songs and encouraged her to form songs from her snippets, riffs, and ideas. For the first time, Cortese opened the songwriting process to her bandmates. She exchanged ideas and songs with them remotely, and then encouraged some to cross the ocean and flesh out arrangements. From recordings of the players beating on all sides of their instruments, Kassirer fashioned loops and created bass lines with members of the band. Lyrics were honed through group examination, with the goal of framing each story in the most impactful way possible to inspire empathy in the listener. The work was quick, but it was deep.
There’s more detail from Cortese in the liners that we’ll draw from considering that while she felt confinement then (as most of us do now), it has some parallels to today’s situation for anyone stranded in Europe, trying to construct a musical project and adds considerable insight to how the album was made. From December 2018 to June 2019 I lived in Ghent, Belgium. I live there still. But for those six months, in order to get my residency, I wasn’t allowed to leave. I haven’t stayed in one place that long since graduating from college. Being still allowed me to fill my days ~ I wrote fragments of songs on the harmonium in our living room or while patting the rhythm on my lap. I co-wrote by text while walking through the Magritte Museum in Brussels…I wrote about how it felt to watch the world falling apart as I was putting my life together. I wrote about finding relief as I was in the process of finding it.
And, more about the process – When the band came to visit in February, we sat in my kitchen sampling beers and eating cheese with strong Ghentian mustard, all while discussing love, memory, resilience, and release. The songs grew, the arrangements came together quickly and when the bulk of the work was done, we went out dancing. In a week they were back in the U.S. and I kept writing. When the band returned in April to record the album, we worked long days, ate lavish meals, and soaked up the view from the attic windows of the studio overlooking a medieval landscape. We tried to infuse these songs with a sense of adventure. A willingness to take a risk and move. To dance, to sing, to speak and to listen.
Cortese and her bandmates made beautiful, unexpected, unpredictable music – just the kind we need right now because there are so many layers and complexities to it, that it makes for many repeat listens at a time when we have the time.
