I found this artist on TikTok
Review of Andrew Montana’s debut album “Azalea, Holly”
Azalea, Holly — Andrew Montana
Released March 24, 2023
I have been so looking forward to listening to this and it did not disappoint. I found this artist on TikTok, as I have with a lot of music I’ve loved over the past few years. Despite this album being an independent release and being self-produced by the artist, it sounds more polished, professional, and complete than some music I hear from artists with major label support behind them.
The style of this album is not quite country, but I’d say more Appalachian folk-y, which sits right in the wheelhouse of country-adjacent that I really love. And maybe because I was listening to this on a warm, 80 degree day in early May, the music of this record is so summery.
The songwriting is like that of early early country, folk, or even old blues standards, where songs and stories have been passed down through enough generations that the origins of where exactly the song came from are obscured. The opening track “Groundfloor” has a Hank quality to it while “Blood Orange Morning Light” sounds like it would fit in the deep-voiced repertoire of Cash.
This next comparison needs a bit of context, but just go with me on this one. “Ochre” sounds like a version of “Bluebird Wine,” an Emmylou Harris song written by Rodney Crowell, that Crowell performs in a documentary film called Heartworn Highways which follows Townes Van Zandt, Guy Clark, Susanna Clark, and their community of Outlaw country and folk musicians they surrounded themselves with in Texas and Nashville. In what is a casual, organic moment amongst friends and collaborators, Crowell’s performance of “Bluebird Wine” is my favorite and the beginning of “Ochre” sounds just like it.
Because I had been following Montana on TikTok for quite a while before this album was released, I had heard a good number of the songs before as they were teased out one by one across several months. Usually, had this been a record released by a major label artist, I would have been annoyed that so many songs had been released prior to the album. When that happens, the final album feels less like a complete body of work and more like a bunch of singles I’ve already heard plus only 4 or 5 songs that I haven’t heard yet, which takes a bit of fun and excitement out of a new album release. But with this album coming from an independent artist who is dependent on a social media platform like TikTok to do the work alone that a label’s marketing department usually would, I’m more lenient and understanding that artists do what they have to to get their music heard, even if that means doing weeks long draw-outs for one song.
My favorites are “Strawberry,” “Daffodil,” “Parallel Lines,” “Do They Call to You?,” and “Blood Orange Morning Light.” Particularly in revisiting “Daffodil,” I recognized itt as likely the first song I came across which grabbed my attention as I was scrolling my For You page. One song that did not work for me was “Deep Down” and only for the fact that Montana’s vocal delivery on this track sounds like if Michael Buble did a folk album. Everything else about the song is fine and fits with the rest of the songs on the album, but once I thought of that, I couldn’t stop hearing Buble.
Overall, I’m just really impressed with this whole project, especially if it really is totally an independent endeavor. The quality of the songwriting, musicianship, and production are so high that despite his almost 68,000 followers on TikTok, I’m shocked this album wasn’t talked about more, especially amongst the Noah Kahan and Adrianne Lenker inclined. Since the album was released in early 2023, Montana currently has 8 singles up now on his Spotify, which will likely form the majority of his sophomore album. So far, they’re sounding like they could easily find a home on this record, but I’m remaining hopeful and intrigued to hear what differences can be heard from this album to the next.
