Considering the considerable press Courtney Barnett has garnered in recent months, it may surprise some that she’s only just released her first album, Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit. Her singles and EPs have upped the anticipation ante, and have worried initial fans – myself included – about whether or not the album itself would stack up. Well worry not, because it does.
Songs like “An Illusion of Loneliness (Sleepless in New York)” and “Nobody Really Cares If You Don’t Go to The Party” are filled with 90s slacker shoegaze with the low end scooped out. They’re spiky slices of college radio-informed punk. But Barnett’s got other tricks up her sleeve, as the bluesy, circus-y waltz “Small Poppies” and sun-and-surf, Vile-borrowing “Depreston” prove. They’re self-aware, smartly arranged, likable… and very, very relatable. Barnett’s lyrics are rapid-fire and approach spoken word at times, especially on lead single “Pedestrian At Best” and the nervous post-grad anthem “Elevator Operator”. These are songs about the anxious, meta-to-a-fault search for authenticity; about existential quarter life crises, the seemingly inescapable move to suburbia, and always feeling financially behind. “We either think that we’re invincible / Or that we are invisible / Realistically, we’re somewhere in between” she drones on the dark confessional “Kim’s Caravan”. Even the album’s title expresses the sought-after fine line between excessive reflection and zen-like emptiness. This is a record about the millennials who have simultaneously had everything handed to them and everything taken away.
And who better in this day and age to explore such a theme? Barnett is a woman who shreds her left-handed guitar and makes no attempt to hide her Australian accent for the sake of marketing demos. “Debbie Downer” is a sly feminist nod to the Stop Telling Women To Smile campaign, and she casually refers to Jesus as a “she”. Barnett is the embodiment of a current generation that’s inspired a million thinkpieces, the unsmiling Broad City of indie rock. We can’t wait for album #2.
4/5
Though originally from Virginia, Kelsey recently graduated from the University of Georgia with a cavalcade of neat degrees. She's written for other sites like Wide Open Country, Half Past, Seeing Trees Music, The Cropper, InfUSion Magazine, and Blurt. Kelsey’s greatest weakness is a large bowl of pho, and though she doesn’t know it yet, her friends will soon host a soup intervention for her. In her spare time she enjoys exploring abandoned buildings, crafting dad-humor puns, collecting vintage key chains, writing long lists that utilize the Oxford comma, and acting like Larry David.