STACK #205 Nov 2021

MUSIC FEATURE

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INTERVIEW

COURTNEY BARNETT

Royal of relatability Courtney Barnett returns with her third album, the beautifully contemplative ThingsTakeTime,TakeTime ; we interviewed the musician about how she pulled its tendrils together. Be sure to read the full piece online at stack.com.au. Words Zoë Radas

her guitar playing, too: see the extra fourth note she adds into her main guitar chord in Before You Gotta Go , which somehow

communicates the vulnerability and reconciliation this song is all about: “If something were to happen, my

C ourtney Barnett‘s videos always have a playfully contemplative mood to them, but two for her new album Things Take Time, Take Time play with an especially cool, meditative idea: the way the natural world interacts with sound. In the gorgeously jaunty A List Of Things To Look Forward To , Barnett receives an LP in the post called Mother Earth‘s Plant Music , and plays it to a potted plant after carefully wrapping some headphones around its leaves. In the surreal Before You Gotta Go , she gallivants around the countryside offering a mic to various bits of the landscape: a cave, a flower, a bed of Barnett- head cabbages. It makes you think about the idea we‘re all just plants, really, which want to listen and be listened to.

“That‘s a nice way to look at it,” Barnett smiles. “I really like it. Just being part of the world that you live in, being in tune with what‘s around you, that kind of thing.” It‘s a useful window

dear/ I wouldn‘t want the last words you hear/ To be unkind... Don‘t you know I‘m not your enemy?/ Maybe let‘s cut out caffeine.” “I think my music playing is very intuitive,” Barnett says. “I just hear something and

Sometimes I do weird things to hide the wrong notes or hide my voice breaking

I‘m like, ‘Ooh, I really like that.‘ Sometimes I listen to a song and think, ‘Wow, it‘s such a mystery! Like, how did they make this song?‘” But

through which to experience Things Take Time, Take Time , which meditates on the minutiae of life – relationships, friendships, and all the little things in between – with an underlying benevolence and hope. First single Rae Street – also the record‘s opener – ruminates on everyday life amongst the rat race, coming back to the line, “Time is money, and money is no man‘s friend.” Barnett‘s delivery of the word “no” in that line is flung upwards in a quirk reminiscent of one of her musical besties, Kurt Vile. “That song is really high for me to sing, so sometimes I just do weird things to hide the wrong notes or hide my voice breaking,” she smiles. “I think it‘s kind of become second nature. Sometimes things happen almost as a joke, or... I assume that I‘ll fix it, but then I never fix it, because I fall in love with it." It‘s all part of the gut reaction which guides

Cabbage Patch Courtneys, from the BeforeYou Gotta Go clip

knowing the technical side doesn‘t smash the illusion, she believes:“It doesn‘t take away the mystery. You‘re even more mystified how someone came up with a particular idea at a particular time. I think it‘s fun. I like diving into how people write songs, and how or why they figured something out.” The album‘s songs were workshopped between Barnett and long-term bud Stella Mozgawa (Warpaint), with whom Barnett worked on her Kurt Vile collab album Lotta Sea Lice (2017) as well as a US fundraiser show in early 2020. “We got in touch again and [were] sending lots of music back and forth,” says

Barnett. “I was sending her demos of the songs I was working on just to get her opinions, and I was mucking around with a lot of my drum machines and asking her technical advice. I really enjoy working with her..."

Things Take Time, Take Time by Courtey Barnett is out Nov 12 via Milk!

NOVEMBER 2021

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