Beautiful music speaking to and from the soul

KURATED NO. 256
LATEST RELEASE + CONCERT TOUR
Conditions of Love Vol. 1 by Rose Cousins

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CONTENTS

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Cousins playing at Vancouver’s St. James Square in the Mel Lehan Hall, October 6

CONDITIONS OF LOVE VOL. 1

Consider love: beautiful music speaking to and from the soul

Rose Cousins feels it all. She sings with subtle but firm passion, writes layered, insightful lyrics and makes heartachingly beautiful music that speaks to and from the soul. Presenting her latest album, Conditions of Love Vol. 1, before a full house at Vancouver’s St James Square Monday night, Cousins roll called some of the myriad conditions we meet when tangling with love – longing, need, breaking up, grief, hope and joy, conflict, reflecting on childhood and more.

Using her best instruments – a pure voice; an assured, fluid way around the piano – Cousins brings together lived experience with a tender heart, meshing the desire and emotional intelligence to share what she’s living. Inventive arrangements with her veteran band – Joshua Van Tassel on drums and electronics plus Dean Drouillard on bass and guitar – expertly augment her writing.

On this tenth record, Cousins renews her bond with the piano, an instrument she grew up with in Prince Edward Island. Looking back as a child, she told CBC Radio Q host Tom Powers, “The piano became a very close and important companion to me.”

Today she observes, “This is a place where the truest truth can come out and I can move at whatever speed is called upon by the music or the lyric and the piano … it’s like a soul connection.”

Thoughtful and erudite, Cousins readily shares the ideas that define and shape her music. She wasted no time in her May interview with Powers offering thoughts about love.

“The body is, at any one time, always healing,” she says. “All it wants to do is heal and get back to the place it understands.

“And I think love is doing the same thing. I think we create conditions, we create emotional weather that it is trying to survive and thrive in. And whether that’s romantic or familial – or probably the hardest one which is self love –it’s just attempting to exist and survive in all these various conditions and it just wants to belong. It quietly waits for us as we try to wrestle ourselves in and around it in things that we were told it’s supposed to look like or feel.”

And then there’s Cousins onstage Monday night – the candid story teller sharing hilarious quips and personal anecdotes. A highlight story is from the summer of 2022 when she was scouting pianos for Van Tassel in her hometown Halifax and happened on a high end music store. She thought, “I can’t go in here because I can’t afford anything,” even though she was searching on behalf of her band member. But, she got sidetracked and found an old 1967 Baldwin and put down a tentative $500 deposit for herself. And then immediately started to fret.

“I had an existential crisis … ‘Do I deserve a piano?'” she asked. Her friends allayed her doubt noting she makes a living playing piano. Their advice, plus a lucky coincidence, helped settle the problem. Halifax jeweller Chance Diamonds asked her to write a jingle for their ads and she readily agreed. Their fee covered the piano’s purchase. It’s the first one she’s owned and it sparked the inspiration to focus this current recording around the instrument.

Losing a friend: K’s Waltz

Each of the record’s 10 compositions offer different takes on love. But none is more poignant than Cousins’ loving ode to fellow PEI musician Koady Chaisson who died suddenly at 37 of an ascending aortic aneurysm early in 2022.

Chaisson was a member of the Juno award-winning band The East Pointers who he credited with saving his life. In his last eight years, Chaisson turned his life around. He got sober, took up cold water dipping, a healthy lifestyle and inspired people around him through his music and example.

In K’s Waltz Cousins writes:

Into the water we go every day
Floating the notion that we’ll be ok

Is it that we both stop and continue to grow
The more of the living
The less we know

You beckon me
With your melody

Your heart
It did not give out or give in
It gave everything
It gave everything
It gave everything

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The band says thanks to the St. James Square audience with Dean Drouillard (left) on bass and guitar and Joshua Van Tassel on drums and electronics

Closing the show with gratitude

Monday’s performance brought the audience to its feet earning Cousins and crew an encore. As the show closed she shared the most heartfelt gratitude from a performer I’ve ever heard. In her brief speech (which I unfortunately didn’t transcribe) she noted that September 30 marked her 20th year of being a wholly self-employed musician, something that still amazes her.
“I couldn’t do this without you and I’m very thankful.” Her humble sincerity resonated through the room. No doubt everyone there felt thankful for her.

What’s next?

Over those 20 years of self employment – plus a few more since her first EP was made in 2002 – Cousins has been honing her craft and gaining an audience. Her superb album Bravado won the 2021 Juno award for Contemporary Roots Album of the Year. She won the Canadian Folk Music Award for Contemporary Singer of the Year in 2012 and her CD from the same year, We Have Made a Spark, won the 2013 Juno Award for best Solo Roots & Traditional Album of the Year. Her 2017 album Natural Conclusion was nominated for a 2018 Grammy Award.

There’s little question that Conditions of Love Vol. 1 will draw a number of nominations in the 2026 awards competitions. And after that? The album’s title suggests Cousins isn’t done exploring the theme. Something to look forward to.

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11 October 2025