STACK NZ Mar #60

MUSIC

FEATURE

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PEDESTRIAN Hardly

Rising Australian star Courtney Barnett talks about her writing process and why her quirky observational narratives seem to have struck a chord with international audiences.

A lthough she’s not one to dwell on it, it seems Courtney Barnett’s vaguely off-the-wall snapshots of everyday life and stream-of-consciousness lyrics are the things elevating the Melbourne singer’s profile from local to global. “It’s hard to look at it and make sense of it,” she told STACK prior to the release of her anticipated debut album Sometimes I Just Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit . “If I thought about it too much it would be weird. People connect with things I’m talking about: growing up, working, decisions, relationships, friendships.” After her dual EP ( A Sea of Split Peas ) and the buzz around a narrative song about her suffering a serious asthma attack that required an ambulance ( Avant Gardener ), Barnett’s blackly funny observational narratives have struck a chord with international audiences. Before her debut album was even released,

she’d already graced the stage at Glastonbury in the UK, and had her new single named ‘hottest record in the world’ by highly influential BBC announcer Zane Lowe. The song, Pedestrian at Best , is a charged, sustained rant at relationship expectations and tribulations, and is a typically vivid example of Barnett’s semi-spoken, tumble-rollercoaster style of delivery. “It’s an older song. I’d been trying to write it for a couple of years; I could never finish it. We’d already recorded the music and I mumbled some stuff over the top of it. Then the words just came at the eleventh hour! It

aforementioned Avant Gardener – is the album opener Elevator Operator . It begins on a Melbourne tram, and via a work day that goes off the rails and some unpleasant social interaction, finds its way to a building rooftop where the protagonist “isn’t suicidal, just insignificant.” Barnett says it has a basis in fact. “That song was the most I got to flex my imagination. That’s the only song about someone else. He told me the basics of the story. The lady in the song is that typical ‘middle-aged, looks down her nose at younger people’ figure. I get that a lot.” Barnett was one of the standout performers at this year’s Laneways, but rates a duet with The Lemonheads’ Evan Dando at the Meredith Music Festival in Australia as a recent highlight. “He was lovely: you never think things like that will ever happen.”

was a stream-of-consciousness type thing; the words spewed onto the page. But the writing process is always different.” Another song that showcases Barnett’s ability to relate a remarkable tale – in the vein of the

Courtney Barnett’s

Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit is out on March 23

MARCH 2015 JB Hi-Fi www.jbhifi.co.nz

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