Alexandra Scott

Alexandra Scott released her January album “I Love You So Much Always” after a battering string of personal losses. Between the end of 2012 and the beginning of 2014, the New Orleans singer-songwriter saw nine close friends pass away. The title was taken from a conversation she had with one of those muses, close to the end, and the recording was dedicated to their collective memory.

Its final release felt like a triumph, the end of a long, tough road toward art processing and finally, conquering, grief.

So to anyone who knew its narrative, it seemed like the most tasteless kind of cosmic joke that, in the short time between the album’s initial release and the party scheduled to celebrate it on Thursday (Jan. 23) at The Allways Lounge, Scott was blindsided by the deaths of two more friends: one peacefully, at an advanced age, and one violently and by his own hand.

If it were any other album, Scott wrote in a post on the album’s event page Thursday, she would have cancelled the show. Instead, she said, the party would be a memorial – as the album was, but just a little more timely.

“We’re the least traditional of New Orleans bands,” she said from the stage Thursday. “But this is a jazz funeral of sorts. That’s why I live here – because you can laugh, and cry and dance all out in the open, and people don’t judge you for it.”

For the most part, “I Love You So Much Always” is pop-inflected folk guitar and piano with hushed harmonies and fiddle from Sam Craft and Alexis Marceaux (the couple performed as part of Scott’s Magical Band Thursday, as well) that weave a meditative tone. As a writer, Scott has an intuitive poetic gift for expressing how things can be tragic, absurd and achingly beautiful all at once. Her songs are often deceptively simple, with a powerful sensory payoff. Litanies of abstracted words and phrases string together, like tiny flags on a line; they sneak up to deliver an unexpected emotional kick and a peek into her strange, lovely, big-hearted mind. The joyous, prayerful “Coney-Island Baby” is an enchanting example of this. So is “If You Don’t Love Elvis,” a quirky and surprisingly affecting love note to rock n’roll.


Scott’s off-kilter sense of humor pervaded Thursday’s show, from her opening solo banjo performance of Paula Abdul’s “Straight Up” to pitch-perfect, straight-faced harmonizing, at one a.m., with Marceaux and member’s of Kelcy Mae’s band on Lorde’s multiple-Grammy-nominated 2013 hit “Royals.”

In her own writing and in her cover choices, Scott is skilled at being funny without making fun, reverent without being overly pious, and, particularly in the context of the new album, letting sadness do its thing without allowing it to tip into misery. These are subtle talents – in their balance, kind of Zen – and they’re probably what makes “I Love You So Much Always” such a sneakily engaging album.

They also engage a strong community. When the singer, in the wee hours of Friday morning, called for any musicians in the house to join her onstage, the bar emptied out. Along with Craft, Marceaux, bassist Rick Nelson and Kelcy Mae, the singer-songwriter Dayna Kurtz, Rotary Downs’ Jason Rhein, members of The New Orleans Swamp Donkeys, Natalie Mae Palms and other crowded onto the stage to trade verses on the traditional funeral sendoff “I’ll Fly Away,” in honor of Scott’s lost friends. She passed out bottles of bubble liquid, and soapy little spheres soon started to glitter in the air. And if the club’s door banged open more than once after midnight, with nobody behind it, who’s to say if it was the weather, or friendly ghosts? - Times-Picayune

The cover photo of Alexandra Scott smiling with balloons on a sunny day belies the story behind her new album, “I Love You So Much Always.” The singer spent much of last year working on the project, which began as a response to dark times in her personal life. The photo is appropriate though, as the songs find her coming through sadness and loss and not being defeated by them.

Alexandra Scott will play a CD-release party Thursday night at The Allways Lounge on St. Claude Avenue with Kelcy Mae opening.

In 2004, Scott released an excellent album, “Spyglass,” that tweaked the female singer/songwriter conventions with intelligence, style, wit and candor, but a bad knee injury during a yoga class changed her career. She continued to perform, but she couldn’t stand at rehearsals, and shows were a challenge. “I’d play a gig then have to stay home three days and rest,” Scott said.

Hurricane Katrina forced her to evacuate, and she spent time in New York City and Montreal, which kept her from finishing physical rehab. Because of that, she went through more surgeries and more pain until last year when she finally had knee-replacement surgery.

“It felt like giving up, to remove a joint,” she said.

She recorded an EP, an album and a handful of tracks during that time, but her physical limitations forced her to keep a lower profile. It also didn’t help that between Mardi Gras of 2009 and Thanksgiving of 2012, she had eight people who were close to her pass away.

“I went on and on without letting myself notice how many people had died, then it hit me. It was bad. I was as depressed as I’d ever been,” Scott said.

Adding to the sadness, her dog, Jack, also died. The money she had saved to make a record went for her dog’s cancer treatment, so she put studio time on the credit card to do something creative.

The first songs were, by her own admission, pretty but bleak, but there was enough there that she turned to the crowdfunding platform IndieGoGo.com to raise money to finish the project.

The process was therapeutic and encouraging. She raised more money than she asked for in the IndieGoGo campaign, and she got back to a place where she felt at home.

“I love being in the studio, and I’m good at it,” she said. “It pulled me out.” Scott has collaborated with Sam Craft (Sweet Crude, Alexis and The Samurai) since before Katrina, and the two worked up arrangements for the songs in the studio with Alexis Marceaux and producer Rick Nelson, who has previously worked with The Polyphonic Spree. Together, they created an album of melodic songs that, like the album’s cover, are deceptive.

The tracks reflect doubt, loss and sadness, but Scott doesn’t let the songs become bummers. Lyrical details and sonic textures fill the songs with life and possibility. “If I go to heaven,” she sings, “Hope I sleep in a king-size bed.”

Scott wrote “If I Go to Heaven” for someone else, and it took her a while to figure out how to sing it herself. Fortunately, Craft figured out an arrangement and started laying down parts. “We had a Sam day,” she said. “He turned it into this Neil Diamond disco pop gospel song about death.” That arrangement told her what to do.

For Scott, the studio was a creative, spontaneous place. After she heard Joanna Newsom’s “Clam Crab Cockle Cowrie” in the car, she started plinking it out on piano during breaks in recording. Finally, Nelson suggested she go ahead and cut it. When she asked friends on Facebook what song she should cover on the album, Nelson added Bruce Springsteen’s “I’m On Fire” to the list of possibilities.

“Rick knows me really well,” Scott said, and she agreed. “It felt right instantly.” The song stays true to Springsteen’s basic arrangement and tone, but Craft’s guitar and violin drone tantalizingly in the background, as Scott’s low-key, precisely focused vocal makes the desire in the song palpable.

“It’s just joy,” she said of being in the studio. “It’s like being in the sandbox. You can’t do anything wrong.” When she finished recording the album, she was a little depressed – a common experience for her.

Now that it’s done, she’s on to the business of trying to sell it and getting her music into the world. She has turned to friends there, just as in the studio.

Scott is a member of The New Orleans Nightingales, a collection of well-known female vocalists in the city, all of whom have careers on their own or in other groups. She has started talking to Vanessa “Gal Holiday” Niemann and Debbie Davis about how to do business better.

“It’s nice to have a community for that,” Scott says. “It’s easy to feel lost in the woods.” - The New Orleans Advocate