Album reviews: Courtney Barnett entertains with words and music

ALBUM REVIEWS: Sit and listen to the words or get up and dance your cares away — this impressive debut effort works both ways.

Supplied for Pulse. Courtney Barnett

THIS week’s album reviews from The Courier-Mail (ratings out of five stars):

ROCK

COURTNEY BARNETT

Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit (Milk/Remote Control)

****1/2

Debut albums this assured and entertaining don’t come along too often.

We were alerted to Barnett’s wry wit and tunes to match through her early EPs, collected as last year’s A Sea of Split Peas. And Sometimes I Sit and Think (an A.A. Milne quote courtesy of a poster at her grandma’s place) is a knockout from start to finish.

For those yet to partake, Barnett packs her songs with everyday details, where guys with a full head of hair worry about going bald and get sick at the sight of their computer (Elevator Operator), where thoughts intrude about the swimmer in the other lane at the pool (Aqua Profunda), and there are dubious first impressions about a suburb with cheaper rents further from the city (Depreston). It is certainly the only album you’ll hear mentioning a percolator and “walking down Sunset Strip, Phillip Island, not Los Angeles”.

These are songs full of the things people say (“If you’ve got a spare half a million you could knock it down and start rebuilding”). But thousands. possibly millions, of aspiring songwriters have jotted down conversations heard on the bus without nailing a collection of tunes like these.

There is something likable about the person you find in these songs, down to being so together about what it means to be a songwriter. As she sings on Kim’s Caravan: “Don’t ask me what I really mean/­I am just a reflection of what you ­want to see/So take what you want ­from me.”

The words are a major part of the attraction: it’s the kind of album that makes you want to put away all distractions and listen closely to what she has to say, the interior monologues and the giddy wordplay (see Pedestrian at Best and “Give me all your money and we’ll make some origami, honey”).

Like me, you might laugh out loud at lines like: “Jen insists that we buy organic vegetables and I must admit I was a little bit sceptical at first, a little pesticide can’t hurt.”

Barnett is part of an Australian songwriting tradition that takes in The Go-Betweens’ Karen through bands like The Lucksmiths and songwriter Darren Hanlon (see also Brisbane’s Harley Young, who is reviewed today, below).

We’re in a world where everything is not what it seems, photoshopped, autotuned, airbrushed.

Courtney and her “bittersweet philosophy” feels real and honest in comparison.

What makes Sometimes I Sitand Think so convincing is the way the conversational tone of the vocal delivery, the lyrics, the twisting melodies, the force of the razor-sharp band and the handmade care and Thurber-esque wit in the cover art all work together as one.

It’s great fun too, the irresistible rhythms of Elevator Operator, the exhilarating punky rush of Pedestrian at Best and Nobody Really Cares If You Don’t Go to the Party, Dan Luscombe’s blazing sparks of guitar on Small Poppies, the kooky ’60s organ on Debbie Downer, the soaring power-pop of Dead Fox.

A record you can sit and think about or get up and dance your cares away. See if you can resist.

Noel Mengel

ROCK

EAST JOURNEY FEAT. YOTHU YINDI

The Genesis Project (MGM)

****

Here is another great voice and band out of East Arnhem Land, picking up the baton from Yothu Yindi and the late Mandawuy Yunupingu. East Journey gained national attention with a 2012 debut album but this lifts the bar. If Yothu Yindi could crack commercial radio, there is no reason a song such as Bright Lights Big City can’t too. Yothu Yindi have known East Journey since childhood and three original members of that band join East Journey for this recording, which features rock tunes interwoven with Yolngu ceremonial songs. The mix works to striking effect. Of course, where they come from is an important part of the East Journey story but, similar to Yothu Yindi, they have strong material and a powerful singer in Rrawun Maymuru, whose voice soars on up-tempo songs Emu and Narrpiya. You could imagine any of these tracks lighting up a festival audience. East Journey caught the eye of LA producer Stevie Salas, who brings a commercial rock feel to the album but it does not detract from the band’s strengths.

Noel Mengel

ROCK

HARLEY YOUNG & THE HAYMAKERS

Flinders Parade (Independent)

****

Sydney has Perry Keyes, whose lyrics focus on the local and particular. Sandgate has Young and his tunes about the bayside suburb that is his home. Flinders Parade is the foreshore street looking north across the water and even when Young’s characters dream of getting out of town it’s not too far: the opening track is Margate GF, as in a Margate girlfriend just across the bridge in Redcliffe. Attempts to break out to the city don’t work out too well, with one character making the arduous walk all the way home in Spring Hill to the Gate. Young wraps these local yarns in hard-to-resist folk-pop settings such as Calling In The Dogs and Chook Raffle Lady, sparkling like sun on the water. Ghost Trap and Sticks and Bricks crank up the volume to capture the desperation of those who feel trapped; We Never Really Had Much Luck and the achingly beautiful title tune are more wistful reflections on life by the bay. Puts you in the mood for fish and chips and a walk on the flats, and I need one of those I Believe in Sandgate logos on a T-shirt!

Noel Mengel

CELTIC

CELTIC THUNDER

The Very Best of (Sony)

****

This male vocal ensemble is well named. The chaps fairly thunder through songs from the heritage of one of the most colourful, (now) most loved but through its sad history among the most reviled people on Earth. With the mid-1990s Riverdance breakthrough the Irish had at last found their place in the sun, and what a place it has become. The great Phil Coulter’s Heartland opening this parade reminds us that “out of the mists of time it comes”, pounding drumbeats that would have accompanied this warrior race coming out of regions between France and Slavonic lands eons ago. These singers honour that heritage in their own inimitable way with pulsating arrangements of some greats such as Danny Boy, Take Me Home, Steal Away (Coulter) plus the “borrowed treasures’’ Hallelujah (Leonard Cohen), A Place in the Choir (Bill Staines), Mull of Kintyre (Paul McCartney), and Amazing Grace. But She Moved Thru'’ the Fair, a jaunty Mo Ghile Mear and Coulter’s all-embracing rugby song Ireland’s Call win the day.

Patricia Kelly

FOLK

JOSE GONZALEZ

Vestiges & Claws (Shock)

**1/2

Swedish folk singer Jose Gonzalez first gained notoriety in 2005 when his single Heartbeats was used in a striking television commercial where thousands of super balls rolled through the streets of San Francisco. A decade on, his third album, Vestiges & Claws, finds Jose bouncing to the same beat. Hushed vocals and fingerpicked classical guitar remain his stock in trade and it’s all becoming a bit tiresome. Opener With the Ink of a Ghost nicely throws back to 1960s Greenwich Village, but across 10 tracks there is little variation. The popping claps of Stories We Build, Stories We Tell provide a mild spark of originality, as does the sombre percussive flow of What Will. But when your album highlight is a whistle-backed instrumental elegy (Vissel), even Gonzalez must realise he is at risk of becoming a one-trick pony destined for the knackery. Gonzalez’s decision to record the album, his first in seven years, without a producer was a misstep. He says he didn’t want the album to sound “too polished”, but a fresh ear could have helped bring new colours to his trademark musical palette.

Matt Connors

PSYCHEDELIC

THE AMORPHOUS ANDROGENOUS

The Wizards of Oz: A Monstrous Psychedelic Bubble (Exploding in Your Mind) (Festival/Warner)

****

If you love the uplifting effect of juxtaposition, this is for you. So does DJ duo Amorphous Androgynous, aka Future Sound of London. They mesh some well-known tracks with rarities to create this two-disc cornucopia. It is not intended to be a definitive history of Australian psych (no Daevid Allen, The Church or Dave Miller Set, for example) but it is a heady brew. It starts with the obvious, Russell Morris’s The Real Thing colliding with Tame Impala. They uncover nuggets: the Hendrix-ian guitar blasts of Doug Jerebine, who fled possible stardom for 30 years of spirituality in India; the synthesiser fantasias of Cybotron; burbling jazz-funk from Rob Thomsett; and Ross Wilson in his Sons of Vegetal Mother days taking advice from Aleister Crowley (Love is the Law). The fey (hippie-era artefact Pip Proud) collides with the fierce ( Mercy Killing by The Sunset Strip featuring Joel Silbersher) and today’s acts such as Pond sound as one with the orchestral version of Railroad Gin’s A Matter Of Time. Oh, and Geoff Crozier’s strangeness is undimmed. “I am the sun and I work by a series of mirrors,” indeed.

Noel Mengel

ROCK

TOTO

Toto XIV (Frontiers)

***

Toto’s first original album in nearly 10 years comes in the shadow of former bassist Mike Porcaro’s death from ALS earlier this month, and the cancer death of early frontman Fergie Frederiksen last year. It’s steeped in the “big rock” tradition of soaring sounds and even loftier concepts. Despite the title, this is actually their 13th studio album. And they might have been out of it for a while, but they’re up with social concerns. On Holy War, which is more upbeat than you might expect, singer Joseph Williams observes: “I think that every execution/Will be televised on your phone.” The soulful 21st Century Blues bemoans the blizzard of misinformation modern society is subjected to. And Unknown Soldier mourns the fallen from Gettysburg to Shiloh: “Nothing seems to change in this world that we see.” Meanwhile, The Little Things wouldn’t be out of place on an ‘80s Jacko album. The standout track is Orphan, with its layered time signatures and combination of high-energy Police-style guitar breaks and Pink Floydian lofty sentiments and vocals.

John O’Brien

Originally published as Album reviews: Courtney Barnett entertains with words and music