Gentle meditations on motherhood offer a rare vulnerability that hits heavy.
Courtney Hartman’s previous album, 2021’s “Glade”, was very much a solitary affair – Hartman recorded the bulk of it alone as she lived in a barn on the property of her childhood Colorado home – but with her new album, the appropriately titled “With You”, she reached out to those around her and created an album written, funded and recorded with her friends, fans and collaborators. The album documents a huge shift in Hartman’s life, too: becoming a mother for the first time.
Her journey to motherhood and beyond looms large over the album, beginning at the opening track ‘Softening’. “All of the edges now are softening / See the light almost standing still / For you,” Hartman opens, her voice barely more than a whisper, backed by an ethereal hum as she experiences the joy of finally being in early labour and soon getting to meet her daughter. ‘Growing’, written when she was five months pregnant, explores the new feeling of life growing within her with a tender kind of curiosity: “Pushing up from the ground / I’ll know you then like I know you now / it’s all a mystery still to me / We’re growing.”
On ‘Honey, Honey’, Hartman worked with Tift Merritt – a woman a few years ahead of her on her parenting journey – to help her craft a song that reflected the postpartum heaviness she felt over her worries about how she might have a life in the music business alongside being a mother. “Tracing my finger on the soft of your ear / Your breath relaxing into mine / You arrived, now I sing, a broken harmony,” Hartman sings with the utmost care, backing vocals from Merritt on the chorus creating sweet, delicate harmonies. The title track is an unguarded reflection of Hartman’s feelings when raising her daughter in her first nine months of life (“Ten thousand words can hardly begin to describe / The lifts and the turns of feeling wholly alive with you / Breathing alongside you / Walking in rhythm with you”), while ‘Bright Eye’ speaks on how the world feels different now she gets to see it through her child’s eyes (“Bright eye, babe of mine / You make the highs feel higher / You make the days go lighter”).
“No one needs mothering / Like a woman in the summer days of mothering,” Hartman reflects honestly on the delicate ‘Mothering’, a reminder that even when a woman becomes a mother, she still craves the love and support of the mother figures in her life. ‘Inside Outside’ is a simple, but still deeply moving love letter written from mother to child, where Hartman promises to love “the inside and outside” of her daughter, reassuring her she can tell her “anything”. ‘Can You See’ is the most straightforward love song on the album, written by Hartman towards her husband earlier in their relationship, while ‘Hindsight’ finds hope in the darkness of postpartum depression as Hartman reassures over soft piano that “The days will be brighter in hindsight”. ‘Softening Again’ was originally the second half of the opener ‘Softening’, but in a clever move, it was split into two and thus brings us neatly full circle as the final track.
Needing to spend her money on necessities like food and bills as she raised her newborn daughter meant that, for the first time in her career, Hartman had to turn to crowdfunding to make “With You” happen. “Asking for help like this was one of the hardest things I had ever done,” she said. “But 557 friends, family and fans came alongside me to help bring [the album] into being. I’ve never felt more humbled or more supported.” It seems that two old adages are true: creativity doesn’t exist in a vacuum, but more importantly, sometimes we all need a little help from our friends.
