Though she’s spent a good deal of her time and career in Nashville, singer and songwriter Courtney Jaye mostly calls the West Coast and Hawaii home these days. Even so, to celebrate the release of this year’s Hymns and Hallelucinations, Jaye returned to Music City for some summer shows, including a remarkable performance at the Belcourt — which accompanied a screening of a suite of music videos for the album directed by Joshua Shoemaker. Inspired in part by her friend Ikey Owens — a deeply talented keyboardist who played with Jack White and The Mars Volta, among others, before his death in 2014 — Jaye decided to make a gospel album for people “who don’t believe that anybody who doesn’t look like them or think like them or dress like them or love like them is the enemy.” And that’s just what she did. Full of lush, introspective folk songs topped by Jaye’s stirring vocals, Hymns feels like church without the sermon.
