Indie rock is flooded with bands and artists who sound like other bands and artists. It sickens me. Please feel free to join me as I revel in such negativity. BUT, I'm not completely jaded. I, too, am still capable of mirth. For instance, once in a while I listen to a fresh new indie album by a fresh new indie artist, you know, going into it expecting something that I may have heard before a hundred million thousand million times...and not only does it happen to be unique, I'm able to discern the uniqueness listening to literally only the first two notes from the debut album's first track! Amazing! Then my faith in indie rock is revived until I hear the next My Morning Jacket clone and I'm bored all over again!
Courtney Barnett is who I'm talking about here. The singer-songwriter hails from southeastern Australia and broke out only relatively recently, largely due to online publications like Pitchfork. She grew up listening to American and English bands, and it sounds to me based on the information out there that she didn't even consider making music herself until she realized that, imagine this now, Australian musicians exist too! But barely! In her defense, there aren't really that many well-known ones, right? AC/DC, Nick Cave, Little River Band. What else? Olivia Newton-John and Midnight Oil? Men at Work?? Pfffft. No wonder she was so surprised. Anyway, there's nothing monumental about her thus-far short tenure as a professional musician. Bouncing around bands here and there for a couple years, borrowing money from friends and family for various projects, that sort of thing. During my my even shorter tenure as a barely-amateur music reviewicist I haven't tackled anyone so new to the scene yet, so since I don't have the luxury of knowing Barnett's career trajectory I'm going to have to make some generalizations that may not age well by the time I listen to her newest album that just came out last week! Here it goes...
First impressions of Sometimes I Sit... bring about Bob Dylan comparisons. From the very first two lines of "Elevator Operator" you can tell Barnett's going to be a storyteller, and it becomes apparent pretty quickly that it comes naturally to her. The cadence of her slacker, nonchalant delivery also brings to mind Kurt Cobain, among other poster children of the early-'90s grunge scene. It's almost as if Barnett put a lot of hours into practicing sounding like she doesn't give a shit. The special touch here is that her method of singing doesn't cover up her thick Australian accent one bit. Score one for uniqueness! It helps that it's less actual singing and more, you know, talking. Plus, in case you forget that she hails from the Land of Oz, lyrics like "He's dropping soy linseed vegemite crumbs everywhere" and "Taxidermied kangaroos are littered on the shoulders", not to mention references to the Great Barrier Reef, for instance, will serve as objective reminders.
The good news is that diversity of tone and style in the music itself keeps this vocal formula from becoming stale. "Elevator Operator" is poppy and jaunty, "Pedestrian at Best" is punky and garage-y, "Depreston" is lazy and folksy, "Nobody Really Cares If You Don't Go to the Party" is heavy and punchy, "Kim's Caravan" is dreamy and hazy; the music seamlessly adapts to Barnett's voice instead of the other way around. If every song sounded just like "Depreston" then I'd say "Fuck you, good sir and/or ma'am!", but instead I'm left saying "Wham Bam, thank you sir and/or-" ...yeah you get the point.
My personal favorite off of Sometimes I Sit... is "Pedestrian at Best", and there's no better song to exemplify the strengths of what Barnett seems to be going for here. It has all the trappings of the classic garage/grunge sound, raw and catchy with obligatory heaps of the attitude of course, but Barnett doesn't sound angry, or aggressive even. She sounds incredulous. Barnett has such a natural, even flow through the verses it's almost like she's rapping in an EZ chair, and then she belts out a chorus that's a culmination of all this incredulity building up that she literally can't help but address and talk through it. "Put me on a pedestal and I'll only disappoint you!/Tell me I'm exceptional, I promise to exploit you!". Overall, it's a very introspective song about Barnett handling her new fame and worldwide recognition after a few successful EPs. It's a very honest display of doubt and self-deprecation while doing everything correct musically at the same time. It's impressive.
The rest of the album projects this unassuming and humble disposition as Barnett kind of just...talks, sort of, more than she sings, about a collection of colorful characters and anecdotes, mostly autobiographical, that seem to be deeply personal. And, underneath it all, there are internal demons that Barnett is trying to reckon with. "Elevator Operator" is a simple story about a man who decides to skip work during the middle of his commute and leisurely takes en elevator to the roof of a random tall building in the city to relax and reflect on life. All the while, a woman taking the same elevator assumes the man is planning to commit suicide. The verse "I think you're projecting the way that you're feeling/I'm not suicidal, just idling insignificantly/I come up here for perception and clarity/I like to imagine I'm playing SimCity", which is the man's rebuttal to the woman's assumptions, taps into more of Barnett's insecurities and obvious preoccupations about the way others may be thinking of her. "An Illustration of Loneliness (Sleepless in New York)" creates a sense of restlessness inherent in its plodding-along, unambitious and lazy melody. Barnett's stream-of-consciousness words intersperse imagery of death with the minutiae of lying on a bed bored. "Depreston" hints at Barnett's future collaboratation with Kurt Vile. It appears that she, like Vile, is able to capture the essence of a mundane, summer day even if the lyrics themselves don't betray this feeling. The words themselves describe a house-hunting excursion in the suburbs to get away from the city ("You said we should look out further/I guess it wouldn't hurt us/We don’t have to be around all these coffee shops"), but underneath the literal context is a metaphor describing an existential crisis underway. The line is repeated at the end, "If you've got a spare half a million/You could knock it down and start rebuilding...", alluding to the metaphor that anything one might spend time cultivating could be razed like it was nothing. There are a lot of this these kinds of panicked thoughts throughout Sometimes I Sit... masked by seemingly casual, stable, and somewhat upbeat melodies. Hell, even the title of the album itself is a big ol' fat cry for help!
Some songs drag a little bit. "Small Poppies" overstays its welcome, I think, as profound as the progression might be. It's a little bit drone-y, something out of the early-mid Sonic Youth catalog without luxury of actually being the mouthpiece of Generation X during 1989 to propel any possible influence forward, although the last line "I dreamed I stabbed you a coat hanger wire" packs a punch after a whole song about self-esteem issues. "Kim's Caravan" is also long and slow, but at least here there's a certain exhaustion setting in that the listener can feel and empathize with as the albums nears its close, especially as the line "So take what you want from me..." is laboriously repeated. It's as if all the neuroses taxing on her psyche aren't worth the effort anymore, but she doesn't know it yet.
All in all, this is a hell of a debut to leave the gate with. Sometimes I Sit... represents an incredibly honest and heartfelt effort to the extent that a crippling introvert-type like Courtney Barnett is able to actually deliver, taking into account the limitations of a music album as a medium to channel this therapy session. I think she pulled it off incredibly well. One can only hope that the personality that Barnett decides to put out to the world matures and refines as her career continues. It's hard to sustain the humble and self-disparaging image for too long, no matter how genuine it might be, and it may not be as endearing later as it is in these early stages. I hesitate to call this Very Good since I believe she can do even better. I look forward to hearing more from Barnett in the future, that's for sure.
GOOD
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