Ever the emotional explorer, Rose Cousins journeyed through “the conditions of love” and reemerged on the other side. So go ahead — ask her anything. She’s up for it.

The pilgrimage begins with “To Be Born (Overture),” an appropriately wordless opening track that unveils a new, atmospheric, instrumental sound for the acclaimed, Nova Scotia-based folk artist. It concludes with “How is This (the last time)," a peaceful goodbye to our unfathomably short turn here on Earth. This album is about all the kinds of love in between. You will emerge from Conditions of Love - Vol 1 in one piece, for Rose holds our hands while she guides us through. For her, love has a kind of terrible beauty. There is her signature deftness with the yearning we all feel, but these conditions of love are not terminal or catastrophic. The journey results in a striking clarity, and it’s the gift of that clarity that brings on surprising tears.

Rose leans into the natural world here, from the delicate, ephemeral blossoms of "Forget Me Not" to the “Borrowed Light” of the moon, calling on the planetary systems, weaving a tapestry of interconnectedness. It’s a reminder that we are all part of something larger, wilder and more wondrous. She embraces the mystery, and this cosmic point of view pushes her into an expanding sonic palette, one that has Conditions of Love - Vol 1 entering new orbits.

“I spent so much time alone outside during the pandemic, and it reminded me of when I was a kid,” Rose says. “The grass I laid on in the yard, the shore behind the farm, the woods where I wandered alone. I do commune with nature. It’s been a real return I didn’t know I needed. I returned with a lot of questions around how I got disconnected.

“There were parts of the last few years that were tragic and parts that were dreams come true. It’s been a novel experience, at times deeply painful and filled with mirrors my previous traveling life helped me avoid. I had just released a tongue-in-cheek song about being alone, and there I was experiencing it on an entirely new level. I was face-to-face with the rawest version of my vulnerability and nowhere to run. Who was I as just a human alone in a room? I had to ask my mind to take a back seat, noticing how it makes up rules that don’t exist. I was noticing the conditions I was creating and perhaps the deficit of, among other types, self-love. I know this struggle isn’t unique to me.”

This meditation on how love tries to survive in the world began and then carried on through the making of the record. Rose brought the beginnings of this musical exploration to trusted friend and longtime bandmate Joshua Van Tassel, a gifted sound designer/drummer/composer who moved back to Nova Scotia from Ontario during the pandemic. Van Tassel would go on to co-produce Conditions alongside Rose.

“I love Josh,” she says. “He’s uniquely creative and inventive. His ability to elevate the emotional intention of a song is so stellar. I really wanted to see what he and I could make together, just us with a few friends flying tracks in, which is not the way I have made any of my records. This approach made space for the vulnerability the songs needed and the time to try every idea we had, and, for me, it was truly liberating.”

In the summer of 2022, while Van Tassel was setting up his NS studio, he sent Rose to inspect a piano for him and it was on this mission she found the instrument that would be the backbone of this record, a 1967 Baldwin grand. With each album, Rose had been incrementally moving back toward the piano, the instrument with which she feels most kindred, and this acquisition sealed the deal.

“Piano is where I feel the most connected emotionally. It’s the best partner in expressing the emotion I’m trying to get at. Now that I finally have my own, I feel my relationship with it deepening. It made sense to make a whole record in this place.”

“The beds of each track were me singing and playing. We'd both listen, share our recorded ideas and then get together to dream, talk, add and mix. We’d ask ourselves, 'What does the air around this song feel like?' I loved our process and I loved how when I needed a push or a shoulder, Josh was a steady partner. It has been so confidence-building to learn how to record my own music in my own house on the instrument that is my first love,” Rose shares.

“I Believe in Love (and it’s very hard)” is, undoubtedly, the album’s cornerstone. It’s an uplifting anthem reminding us to stay at times unbearably open and necessarily vulnerable in our wavering between love and freedom. “Needed You” speaks to a helpless time by revisiting an old wound that’s healed over now, the scar still visible. It’s a loving lament recognizing that when we most needed love, it wasn’t there. But give us time, and each of us figures out how best to survive in the world into which we are born. Give us more time, and we realize we are two people: the person we needed to be as a child, and the adults we are, separate from our families of origin.

“At some point I became two selves; one who could go out in the world, confident and accomplished, reliable and hardworking — the boss — and another who is quiet, introverted and has emotional needs and a desire for love and connection. There’s a moment in childhood where you can choose connection or authenticity. I chose connection in whatever way it was available. Accomplishment, helpfulness, usefulness, reliability, loyalty, independence. Love is constantly trying to endure and persist in endless conditions, whether or not your needs are getting met. Bliss and turbulence.”

For all the relationships that didn’t work, all the missteps and all the disappointment, forgiveness and acceptance are the most elusive. Conditions of Love - Vol 1 lands in a place of acceptance — perhaps the only real way forward.

“There’s no such thing as love without loss, disappointment, misunderstanding, doubt. Be it friendship, romantic or familial, these negative experiences are impossible to escape. I think the hardest part of the world shutting down was having to shift my gaze to face my own question of worth. ‘Who am I if I’m not being useful or accomplishing things at high speeds?’”

This collection of songs gathers up moments of yearning, tracing them back to the person and place and the desire. Whether it’s homesickness, the wish for company, seeking affection and connection, all these desires come from wanting to be recognized, to be loved and to be found worthy. Each song borrows from the next as it sees love through its own unique prism.

In "K's Waltz,” an ode to her late friend and colleague, Koady Chaisson, Rose marvels at the resilience of the human spirit and the limitless capacity of a giving heart to adapt, even in the face of loss. There is grace in the everyday act of survival. “That’s How Long (I’ve waited for your love)” is a poetic analogy for unquantifiable lengths of time; the length of a longing, with all its flavours. A classic Rose Cousins song, with a single line that tips your world sideways. Meanwhile, on “Denouement” in gorgeous shorthand, Rose asks us to fill in the blanks between paired words to create our own film scene. With her signature economy of words, Rose eloquently captures the electric turbulence of relating in love, and the uncomfortable slide into feelings that catch us up and leave us stuck in a moment.

There’s a reason Cousins dives so deep on her new album Conditions of Love - Vol 1. She insists, “It’s our job to go as far and as deep and be as open as we possibly can.” Rose is a miner, minstrel, pilgrim, a truth seeker who finds what she’s looking for, in all its imperfection, in the depths of our most complicated of emotions: love.

Rose Cousins’ work as garnered her two JUNO Awards (2013’s We Have Made a Spark & 2021’s Bravado), two Canadian Folk Music Awards, eleven East Coast Music Awards and one Grammy nomination (2018’s Natural Conclusion), along with praise from the likes of the CBC, No Depression, LA Times, Billboard, Folk Alley, and NPR, who raved “Cousins’ disarmingly fluid vocal tone has the ability to convey the most internalized feelings without an ounce of fuss.” Over the years, she has shared stages with Patty Griffin, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Jann Arden, Bruce Cockburn, Josh Ritter, Kathleen Edwards, Joe Henry, Aoife O’Donovan and Anais Mitchell, and her music has fittingly underscored scenes from notable TV shows including Grey’s Anatomy, Fire Country, Batwoman and Virgin River along with several independent films.