FEATURE:
Modern Heroines
PHOTO CREDIT: Mia Mala McDonald
Part Fifty-Nine: Courtney Barnett
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BEFORE looking at her upcoming album…
PHOTO CREDIT: Gem Harris for Loud and Quiet
and some news about that, I wanted to look back at a few interviews Courtney Barnett has conducted through the years. The Sydney-born artist’s debut album, Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit, was released in 2015 (her double-E.P., A Sea of Split Peas, arrived in 2013). It was met with huge acclaim. Barnett released Lotta Sea Lice, a collaborative album with Kurt Vile, in 2017. Her second album, Tell Me How You Really Feel, was released in 2018. We are going to get the much-anticipated Things Take Time, Take Time is November. I am really looking forward to the album. Barnett’s style and consistency is something to treasure. She is humorous and conversational; also striking and urgent. There is so much to love about her songwriting. I do feel that she will be a massive artist in the future. An icon. At the moment, she is definitely a popular and much-loved artist - though I think the best is yet to come. The first interview I want to bring in is from Loud and Quiet. They interviewed Barnett way back in 2013. It is an interesting early interview where we get a glimpse into the career and mindset of a hugely promising young artist:
“Though I can’t see her face, Courtney seems to speak with a perpetual crease at the corner of her lips. It’s no exaggeration to say that I can, quite audibly, hear her smile as she chats about her new life as a rising star. “I got back from overseas like three days ago and I’ve just been catching up on work. After this I’m going to a party. I’ve got a friend sitting out in my garden. It’s my birthday tomorrow. So I’m just ready to – you know – have some fun.”
Having dismissed the idea of a record deal early on, Barnett took things into her own hands by creating Milk! Records. “I didn’t really think about it, to be honest, when I started it. I had no idea of the music industry and I just assumed that getting a record deal, in inverted commas, was quite a far-out concept, so I didn’t even consider it.” By distilling the notion down to its simplest form, it became clear that she could take on a lot of the work herself. “I was like, ‘Well, what is a record label?’ A record label is just a middle man to get your music to people.” Not only that, but she feels that if the music is reaching the people who care the most then her job is a successful one. “I was playing a shitload of gigs at the time and I prefer my music to go to people who are nice and enjoy the music, who come to the shows and tell me that they’re interested and they want to buy the CDs. I’d prefer for those people to buy the records than a hundred other random people who probably don’t give a shit. I was kind of going for quality over quantity and I figured I could just do that myself. It just kind of grew from there. I thought, ‘I can just do this. I can do my own artwork and post CDs out to people.’”
While she admittedly stumbled into the business, the 25-year-old isn’t content with releasing only her own music through the imprint. “We’ve got a few other bands at the moment and I reckon we’re gonna branch out and get a distribution deal or something. Which is something that I never even knew about before. We’re gonna keep the same general idea in progress.” She’s pretty confident in her roster and one of Barnett’s lyrics goes, “My friends play in bands / they are better than everything on radio.” I have to ask: are they? “Yeah, I reckon! I’ve got heaps of friends who play music and they’re great. It’s a very broad statement, but there’s lots of shit on the radio and there’s lots of bands who get famous because they have a lot of money. There’s also a lot of really great bands on the radio so whatever. But it’s a bit of a tongue in cheek comment saying that my friends make cool music as well”.
If you have not spent a lot of time with Courtney Barnett’s music, then set aside some. You can find her on Twitter and keep abreast of what is happening. I am keenly looking ahead to see where Barnett goes and just how big her career gets. We have a very special and talented artist who releases such incredible music.
The next piece that I want to source from is The Guardian’s interview of 2018. She talked about Tell Me How You Really Feel. As a gay artist, I am sure Barnett has (unfortunately) had to deal with a lot of homophobia on social media. She faced some nasty comments when she covered INXS for an Australian iPhone X campaign:
“It’s hard to imagine a more stellar trajectory than Barnett’s, but she has always been fame’s accidental tourist. Her 2016 debut album, Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit, was a string of worry beads – about social disconnection, overthinking and neighbourly relations – that was nominated for a Grammy and a Brit, and won the Australian Music Prize and four Aria awards in her home country. “Put me on a pedestal and I’ll only disappoint you,” she warned in Pedestrian at Best – but that warning fell on deaf ears.
Despite her guarded nature, Barnett’s skill is in making even her most specific lyrics relatable. It’s unlikely that the audiences who saw her perform Depreston on The Ellen DeGeneres Show and The Tonight Show were familiar with the Melbourne suburb of Preston, yet she has tapped into a generation literate in depression and anxiety, as well as an older crowd reared on the fine-tuned melancholy of Lou Barlow and Kurt Cobain.
Barnett still sings with the baffled shrug of her previous record, but Tell Me How You Really Feel is a more intense album: take the kettle whistle at the beginning of Hopefulessness, which turns a domestic scene into an existential scream. Then there’s the song Crippling Self-Doubt and a General Lack of Confidence. By way of explanation, she says: “When I’ve done shows and interviews, I’ve noticed myself doing that female thing, of trying to please people even when they say rude things, not speaking up for myself. Small things, which add up and manifest as a bigger self-hatred.”
Not long after the release of Nameless, Faceless, Apple rolled out its Australian iPhone X campaign, which set a video of people celebrating the country’s legalisation of gay marriage to Barnett’s cover of INXS’s Never Tear Us Apart. The YouTube clip received so much negativity that comments were disabled. Barnett says: “I really ummed and ahhed about it, but I did that [advert] because it’s such a mainstream company, just to shove it in people’s faces, and then I saw the most fucking homophobic comments on it”.
“Different is definitely the word, though you get the sense that it’s done little to change Barnett’s outlook. The path from bedroom crooner to internationally-renowned rockstar Barnett has mapped is one characterised by her freewheeling approach to songwriting, paired with an evident clarity of vision.
She's got two tonally distinct, critically acclaimed albums under her belt, the second of which, Tell Me How You Really Feel, she's still touring. And just last week her DIY label Milk! Records put out the new single by alt rock cornerstones Sleater-Kinney, produced by none other than St. Vincent”.
I want to stick with Tell Me How You Really Feel for a bit. It is her latest album, and one that took her to the attention of a whole new audience. Songs like Charity and Nameless, Faceless are gems from an album that is stuffed with incredible tracks. Barnett spoke with Skiddle in 2019. In addition to discussing how her songs change over time, we learn more about Barnett’s friendship with Sleater-Kinney:
“Well I became friends with the band a couple of years ago. I don't really remember how just… somehow.” she says, talking with a tone of both self-effacement and genuine warmth about her connection with Sleater-Kinney. “And yeah. We hung out a couple of times, and then Janet [Weiss] played drums with me and Kurt Vile on our tour. They've just kind of become friends, and so it was a real honour to release their new song and then the album on my little label. It's amazing.”
When I ask if she grew up on Sleater-Kinney and their contemporaries she pauses before saying no. “To be honest I didn't actually grow up with them. I didn't even know what DIY was,” she says. “It wasn't until my early 20s that I discovered this whole other world. If you remember that doco… documentary we call them docos - but yeah, that documentary about Kathleen Hanna. I watched that and I was like oh wow: Bikini Kill and Sleater-Kinney, and so I started researching what riot grrrl was and all that stuff. I mean I was probably actually in my mid-20s. So like five years ago.”
It’s telling of her attitude that Barnett was emulating the staunch do-it-yourself principles of her peers way before she was even aware of them. With a handful of tracks, a loan from her grandmother, and a sketch of a milk bottle in hand, she ran the first 1000 CD pressing of her debut EP I’ve Got A Friend Called Emily Ferris way back in 2012.
Seven years later and she’s managed to maintain those principles, even as her records are distributed internationally. Such a scale of interaction has clearly afforded Barnett some consideration on how perception and time affect meaning, especially a year on from the release of Tell Me How You Really Feel.
“It's funny how much songs change over time. From writing them and then even from the first time I show them to people. Like when I first showed them to my band suddenly they meant something different with someone else listening to them,” she tells me. In much the same way, Barnett’s own vocal delivery has shifted over time, from the rapid-fire stream-of-consciousness rhythm of her debut, to the more measured cadence of her follow-up.
If Barnett views reading other people’s innermost confessions as voyeuristic, we wonder aloud if she herself feels like the subject of voyeurism. “Yeah for sure. I think as a songwriter you’re projected onto, and you kind of can’t fight it - that's part of the whole package. I was just thinking about this yesterday. I'm reading this Zadie Smith book of essays and she writes this essay about Joni Mitchell and how much she loves the album Blue and how as music lovers we have an idea of the artists that we love and they're forever kind of captured in that time and moment.”
This unique blend of self awareness and humility, wherein Barnett recognises her status as a figure of interest, but doesn’t overstate her worth, can’t help but be charming. Earlier, when discussing the art installations pieced together from her fan’s contributions she chuckles slightly, then says “It's a funny thing cos I didn't really... do much, because it's just everyone else's words.” As said in her breezily-tempered Aussie accent it’s sincere, even as it elides the sweeping impact her own words have had in cultivating such a wide-spanning and open discourse”.
I am going to bring things up to date soon. It is worth sourcing a review of Tell Me How You Really Feel. When they sat down with the album, this is what NME had to say:
“No-one’s born to hate – we learn it somewhere along the way.” This is the sombre note on which Australian slacker-queen Courtney Barnett begins her second album, amid heavy-hearted, Nirvana-indebted guitar. It’s a typically astute observation from a singer-songwriter who is carving a career out of them: Barnett’s speciality is picking meat off the bones to expose the emotional skeletons of life’s seemingly mundane happenings. Both her 2013 double-EP ‘A Sea Of Split Peas’ and 2015 debut album ‘Sometimes I Sit And Think And Sometimes I Just Sit’ established her as funny and candid – and a cracking storyteller.
In 2016, she told NME that her follow-up would be “darker and more melancholy” and immediately, opener ‘Hopelessness’ strikes a change in vibe. Whereas those previous releases felt like a chat over a cuppa between mates, ‘Tell Me How You Really Feel’ feels more personal, like opening a window into Barnett’s mind, exposing her vulnerabilities and fears in the process.
PHOTO CREDIT: Christo Herriot
Barnett has been open about her struggles with mental health – recently explaining to NME: “I’ve always had a melancholic feeling since I was a kid; I guess it just crept in” – and several songs deal with the repercussions of having anxiety as a constant presence in her life. The reflective ‘Need A Little Time’ and breezy ‘City Looks Pretty’ tackle the challenges that come with fame, including isolation: “Friends treat you like a stranger and strangers treat you like their best friend.” Insecurity rears its head over slouchy guitars on ‘Crippling Self Doubt And A General Lack Of Self Confidence’, which features Kim Deal on backing vocals, Barnett sighing: “I never feel as stupid as when I’m around you”.
Later, ‘Nameless, Faceless’ rages at modern misogyny, quoting Margaret Atwood: “Men are afraid that women will laugh at them; women are afraid that men will kill them.” But it also takes on Internet trolls, who add to the sniping in Barnett’s head: “He said I could eat a bowl of alphabet soup and spit out better words than you. Are you kidding yourself?”
‘Tell Me How You Really Feel’ is Courtney Barnett at her angriest and most vulnerable, but being a drinker of details means she can also blow the beauty of life’s little things up to full-size. Closer ‘Sunday Roast’ is wonderfully smeared slacker ballad and an ode to cherishing friendship that sees Barnett carve out her heart and leave it open on the kitchen table. It’s that candid charm that may just make her the voice of her generation”.
Courtney Barnett had definite plans for 2020. Things have had to change with the pandemic. Even so, she has recorded an album. So many people are curious to hear what Things Take Time, Take Time sounds like and whether it is going to be similar to Tell Me How You Really Feel. Rolling Stone caught up with Barnett recently to chat about her third solo studio album:
“At the start of 2020, Courtney Barnett was looking forward to a year of open-ended songwriting, with just one proviso. “It’s important to remember to live and to experience and to have something real to write about,” she told Rolling Stone in an interview that January. “Not just to sit in a room and write an album for the sake of making an album.”
Barnett laughs when she’s reminded of that conversation now. “That’s funny,” the Australian singer-songwriter, 33, says on a call from her home in Melbourne. “Very ironic … Whether I liked it or not, that’s what the world gave us. It’s probably the most quiet year I’ve ever had.”
The album that she spent most of 2020 sitting in a room and writing is called Things Take Time, Take Time, and it will arrive this November 12th on Mom + Pop Music and Marathon Artists. For fans of Barnett’s distinctive songwriting, it’s a rich reward, full of the sly observations on the peaks and valleys of everyday life that have made her one of the past decade’s most beloved indie artists. There are surprises in store, too: The 10 songs on the album shine in a newly revealing light, mostly stripped of the crunching rock-band sound that filled her first two solo LPs, and presented instead in a form that feels closer to the radical honesty of a solo bedroom tape. It just might be the most personal record yet from an artist who’s already given the world plenty of emotional truth.
Barnett describes Things Take Time, Take Time as an album about finding “some sort of joy and gratitude, out of some sort of pain and sadness” — a new morning after a dark night. “Write a List of Things to Look Forward To,” a bright, jangly highlight of the new LP, is a good example of what she means.
She’d begun writing new songs shortly after the spring 2018 release of her second solo album, the turbulent Tell Me How You Really Feel, but ended up discarding most of them after a while. “Write a List of Things to Look Forward To” was one of the first songs she kept. It arrived toward the end of 2019, at a time when she was feeling deeply distraught for reasons that included a devastating bushfire season in Australia.
“I was just really sad,” she recalls. “I was in a really dark place, and a friend told me … They didn’t know how to help me. They said, ‘Why don’t you try to write a list of positive things in your life that you’re looking forward to?’ At the time, I was like, ‘Nothing. There’s nothing I’m looking forward to.’”
Her friend kept pushing, and eventually Barnett came up with enough items to fill “like, 25 verses,” which she later pared down to the two-minute-plus mini-anthem that appears on Things Take Time, Take Time. “Sit beside me, watch the world burn,” she sings over upbeat chords. “I love that the song feels so fun,” Barnett says. “It sounds like you’re driving across a highway and it’s sunny. I love the juxtaposition of those things.”
She went on to play a pair of bushfire relief fundraisers in the early weeks of 2020, then flew to the U.S. for a short solo tour that ended with a benefit show in Los Angeles on Valentine’s Day. By the time she got back to Melbourne, the new threat of Covid meant that she had to self-quarantine. Without anywhere of her own to stay, she crashed at a friend’s empty apartment. “I ended up staying there for the whole year,” she says. “It was this amazing little flat, and it had these beautiful big windows and big light. I was really lucky to get that place”.
I shall leave things there. After the release of her third solo album, I hope Barnett get chance to showcase the songs. Keep an eye on her social media channels for news regarding dates. A compelling and inspiring musician, Courtney Barnett is definitely someone who is going to influence many other artists. I think there are a lot of artists who take a lead from Barnett. She is one of the most interesting songwriters around. With Sydney’s Courtney Barnett, we have…
A seriously amazing musician.