Courtney Barnett’s all-conquering return
CONCERT
Courtney Barnett
The Bakery
Saturday, May 2
REVIEW: SIMON COLLINS
4
n the golden age of the compact disc, a singer-songwriter from Hobart wrote some of the greatest lyrics you’d hear south of TISM. Yet Rob Clarkson toiled in near anonymity.
Flash forward to 2015 and the CD empire has been shared, burned and uploaded to virtual death, but here comes another Taswegian with witty wordplay set to lo-fi indie rock.
Unlike Clarkson, Melbourne-based Courtney Barnett has managed to attract a global following on the basis of a few killer singles, including 2013 hit Avant Gardener.
Barnett had played Perth before, but this time she arrived with US talk show slots, South by Southwest festival domination and a brilliant debut under her belt.
Potentially album of the year, Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit borrows its title from an A. A. Milne quote. And at the first of two sold-out shows at the soon-to-close Bakery, Barnett was more energetic Tigger than slowpoke Eeyore as she dished up droll poetry of which Winnie-the-Pooh would approve.
Playing in power trio mode with Bones Sloane on bass and Dave Mudie on drums, the guitar-slinging star started by pulling Elevator Operator and Aqua Profunda! from her sonic honey pot, the latter melting into an quasi-metal rock out.
A slowed-down version of Small Poppies was followed by two finer examples of the 26-year-old’s detail-rich songsmithery about environmentalism (Dead Fox) and real estate (Depreston).
The packed punters sang the outro to the latter — “If you had a spare half a million, you could knock it down and start re-building” — with a mixture of glee and financial regret.
The punky Debbie Downer and Nobody Really Cares if You Don’t Go to the Party maintained the rage, till fans joined Barnett for an epic sing- along to Avant Gardener and the sharply self-deprecating Pedestrian at Best, which closed the main set.
Either side of 2014 release Pickles from the Jar, the CB3 covered the Lemonheads’ cute Being Around and the Easybeats’ classic I’ll Make You Happy to put sweet icing on the cake.
The former linked Barnett to the lo-fi tradition of Evan Dando while the latter rightly placed the young-ish singer-songwriter in the pantheon of Oz rock. She’s that good.
