Courtney Barnett’s music needs to be big. Or at least her ambition does. She burst on the indie scene in 2013 with “Avant Gardener,” a truly unique and endlessly entertaining/funny/sneakily deep song about having an allergic reaction to pulling weeds, and I was lucky enough to see her on an early U.S. tour at a small DC club (DC9) and then watch her play at increasingly larger venues, including Pitchfork Festival in 2018, when she was still playing songs from her genius 2015 album, sometimes I sit and think, and sometimes I just sit, as well as her 2017 collaboration with Kurt Vile, lotta sea lice, and her 2018 record Tell Me How You Really Feel, which began to augur a change.
And although I almost always prefer a small club to a big hall or crowd of thousands, Courtney’s music filled more space and just felt like it worked better in those settings. Not because her band got bigger, or even her sound, really; she’s stayed true to her trio format and basic approach to songwriting. But her ideas, her structures, her approach, and her periodic shredding just seemed like she was made to be in a bigger space and connecting with more people.
That was true throughout those early releases, until 2021’s Things Take Time, Take Time. That record was hard to parse and just felt lost and dark. Of course, lost and dark can be ingredients of incredible music, but not for Courtney Barnett. She toured some, but in a world still gripped by the pandemic, it felt like it came and went and that Courtney almost disappeared from the scene.
And now she’s back. Courtney Barnett is one of those rare artists that everyone seems to root for. How can you not? She’s eminently likable, endearing, an incredibly gifted songwriter and lyricist, and as I said, a hell of a guitar player. Her background is humble, earnest, and just very “real,” whatever that might still mean.
