Adorably scruffy Courtney Barnett has gone from Easey St to Milan
Courtney Barnett is navigating the weird, sleepless, alcohol-y world of rock’n’roll and winning, she tells Mikey Cahill (over a few glasses of champers).
She’s here, she’s there, Courtney Barnett is omnipresent.
She’s destroying it at showcases at SXSW this week and dominating proceedings on your iPod and then she is on at the service station while you fill up your car with petrol, being a gas with lines like “I’m a fake I’m a phony I’m awake I’m alone I’m homely, I’m a Scorpio!” and “I was walking down Sunset Strip, Phillip Island, not Los Angeles.”
I’m fairly sure the Thornbury-via-Hobart-but-originally-Church Point singing songwriting sage has cloned herself thrice so she has time to sit and think at Walkerville Point in Wilsons Promontory, time to kill her live gigs overseas and even time do the grip ‘n’ grins with music moguls, fans and sh-tkickers like me.
Finally, there is a fourth Courtney Barnett who just really likes lying in bed and sleeping and trying to sleep and going around in circles and writing pages and pages of thoughts and lyrics who most definitely will NOT be doing avant gardening today thank you very much after a certain anaphylactic shock and asthma attack episode.
It must be easy/hard being Courtney right now.
Right after she finished Laneway Festival’s magical mystery tour I sat down for lunch with the mousy haired, gentle-faced, quietly-zinging 23 year old. We dived into a Kerouacian meets AA Milne stream-of-consciousness chat and the fish of the day.
Courtney Barnett-Barnett, C-Barns, Chutney Buttnet...you already have a lot of nicknames.
“Oh yeah, (Jen) Sholakis (drummer in East Brunswick All Girls Choir & Jen Cloher) calls me Chutney Buttnet.”
How was the whole Laneway Festival experience? You dominated.
“The hometown show in Melbourne was mad, I was excited about it. Just being able to hang out with the same bands and make actual friends (relieved laugh) instead of normally being ships in the night, getting and getting out. It was fun. They gave us an extra good spot for the Melbourne one.”
Which bands became your bros?
“Benjamin Booker and his band we were already sorta friends with them after doing shows in America. The POND guys, Peter Bibby, Angel Olsen.”
Did you bond with FKA Twigs about having the same surname? NB: Twigs’ name is Tahlia Barnett.
“No! (exasperated, grinning) I only found out about that on the last day!!”
I’ve been banging on about it for months!
“No-one told me. And then I saw it, I was like ‘Ahhhh (miffed).’ I watched her play but I didn’t talk to her.”
Was she hanging out with everybody?
“She was around. Everyone was hanging around.”
Did you get any FaceTime with Agnes DeMarco?
“Yeah she was lovely.”
[Meals arrive, champagne is draaaank]
I’m having half this broccoli. If you dare to eat more than that piece right thurrr....(cuts finger through the middle point of the plate)
“Or what? (playful tone)”
The lyric “Put me on a pedestal and I’ll only disappoint you” from Pedestrian At Best is backlash-baiting yeah?
“I’m pre-empting all that.”
Did you write that with the inevitable, stooopid ‘Strayan Tall Poppy syndrome in mind? Or was it afterwards and you thought ‘This actually works really well’?
“Um, (laughs), it was very tongue in cheek. That was the very last song written, it was the fastest song I wrote, I jumped around and played with it. The general message is there.”
And the clown film clip, were you reticent at first to get dressed up as a clown?
“That was my idea! Every video, like playing tennis in the Avant Gardener clip was my idea, the night before I was lying awake in bed, I couldn’t even sleep, ‘Is this the worst idea ever?’ It’s not like Avant Gardner is very subtle. Pedestrian At Best was based on a street performer I saw.”
Where did you guys do the Pedestrian At Best clip?
“Whittlesea Funfields. We wanted to hire out Luna Park but it was far too expensive (laughs). So we settled on Funfields.”
I wrote an interview note in my phone ‘Very adaptable’ and it came up ‘Very adorable’ which is a perfect auto-correct; it’s hard to find a bad review of you. Are you prepared for negative reviews?
“It’s an unrealistic thing to expect I’ll never get bad reviews. I tried to stop looking at stuff so much because if and when — (laughs) when — that happens I’ll look at it to balance out all the good reviews. It’s a bit hard with social media, I dunno, it’s fair enough, everyone’s entitled to their opinion.”
Remember the quote from Baz Luhrmann’s Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen) song: ‘Remember the compliments you receive, forget the insults, if you succeed in doing this, please tell me how’
“Yeah, one nasty comment is worth 99 good ones, y’know, it shouldn’t be like that.”
How do you balance social media time with Courtney time? Your lyric in Anonymous Club is pertinent: ‘Turn your phone off my friend.’
“I got so over it, that connection we have with our devices. It’s not that hard now, I put something up online and leave it for a few hours. I’m not the kind of person that has to post what they had for lunch ‘I just had some bread.’ I just say ‘Doing a tour, thanks for coming, here’s a funny photo, here’s a link to something which I like. The End.’ Otherwise you could do it all day and not make any art.”
Amanda Palmer’s husband Neil Gaiman went offline for a while, he said ‘You’ve gotta be bored to have interesting ideas’, — so true — and Bjork recently went off into the Icelandic wilderness for three months to clear her head...
“We’re going away for a week to a place that has no phone reception, it’s nice to do that otherwise I’d go f--king mad. My grandma read in some paper that I was ‘Adorably scruffy’ and she called me up and said (adopts concerned Grandma tone) ‘Brush your hair, someone’s calling you scruffy in the paper’ and I was like ‘I don’t think that’s a bad thing, they don’t mean it in a bad way’.”
Let’s talk about the record, the song An Illustration Of Loneliness (Sleepless In NY) tricks you because you think it’s gonna be one kind of song with one kind of vibe and then it elevates. Is that you or Luscombe?
“Actually it’s both of us, we both do the riff, we double it up. He did some f--king amazing things on that record, it was the first time I went to CMJ, the first time I’d experienced jet lag, the wild insomnia, mega-stress levels, so many meet ‘n’ greets and new friends, all this attention on me and I was really overwhelmed by it all.”
Your nature is more subdued than a thousand hectic hellos; you’re a chilled cat. Have there been times where you’ve asked ‘Do I really want all this?’
“Yeah, um, (serious tone) I think it’s about figuring out what you do want and then catering to that. I’m sure Lorrae (McKenna, Remote Control rep) would like me to do press every day of the week but it’s about everyone being happy and so that I’m happy and I keep making more music and creating more stuff. For a long time it was just me and my manager Nick (O’Byrne) and way back when I was 20 it was me trying to figure stuff out.”
I hear similar themes on your record as the new Father John Misty album I Love You Honeybear: disillusionment with real estate prices, mortality, the price of fame, the human condition. He sings ‘They gave me a useless education, And a subprime loan, On a craftsman home.’ It’s similar to Depreston.
“Yeah right (interested tone). I guess it’s a pretty universal thing.”
How did you get Depreston down in the stooodio after playing it live for so long? How did you tackle it?
“We actually tried to tackle it a few times. That song more than any of the others just never sounded right, I don’t know, I can’t think of a comparison, it’s got the real gentle drums, it’s more country for us. We finally got it down in the album sessions in Headgap — it’s the only studio I’ve really worked at — it’s close to home, I like it. We did Europe last November and before then we’d only done a couple of Paris shows and Prima Vera. We were travelling around Europe and having people in Milan coming up to me and (half-arsed Italian accent) ‘I love Depreston, me and my boyfriend bought a house and we had to buy in outer outer, much further away suburbs.’ They don’t know where Preston is but they get the general gist of it. They’re like ‘My grandmother passed away last year and we went into her house and hearing Depreston we can relate’ and I’m like ‘F--king hell that’s wild.’ I didn’t think that would happen, I didn’t think it wouldn’t happen, I just didn’t think about it. It’s nice to have that connection.”
Upper Milan and Preston, sister cities at last. How do you go keeping in contact with family and friends and Jen (Cloher, girlfriend)?
“Oh, Viber. It’s the best.”
The song Small Poppies sounded like the hardest to get down, there’s anguish, it lurches up, you almost take on the persona of someone else. ‘I don’t know the man I am trying...’ You leave off ‘to be’. Is this about dealing with pressure of a relationship to your art and to your lover and to your fans?
“Actually that one and Kim’s Caravan, they were the easiest, they were loose, everyone was still trying to figure out what to do when we were in the studio. I did the vocals live and it’s like you’re on a boat — it’s in 3/4 as well — I’m probably most happy with that and Kim’s Caravan, we captured the correct vibe. For Aqua Profunda, I used to live on Easey St in Collingwood. I was going through my piles of s--t that I take with me everywhere. You write down an idea and then a year later you write it down again like it’s a new one (laughs). I was going through all of that and I found those lyrics.”
Deadlines are handy. How many songs did you have to pick from?
“A lot of them were half finished so I let them lay for a bit and gave them more time, thankfully, these ones on the record I was happy with what they were saying and how they were sounding. Love a deadline. It took me so long to get a playlist together, I’ve never curated that many songs, I didn’t wanna start off with one that was so wordy, I didn’t want four attack songs then four elevator, solid beat songs, it was about trying to fit them altogether, some are poppy, then you’ve got the Small Poppies; Boxing Day Blues was always gonna be a minimalist closer.”
There’s no coming back from there.
“Totally.”
[Lorrae from Remote Control shows Courtney new press shots for her approval] She glances at them furtively and says “I don’t mind all of them except the looking over my shoulder one.”
Talk me through the baptism of fi-yahhh that was your first American tour and the adjustments you’ve made since then.
“The touring and learning experience, y’know, you’re playing and there’s alcohol and you go to a party and it’s a very unrealistic thing to do seven nights a week when you’re getting up at 7am and driving for eight hours or getting on a plane. We couldn’t afford to take days off either. We try to go swimming if there’s a pool but sometimes it’s just so hard you just wanna sleep. The less you exercise you get the more depressed your serotonin levels are. It’s these weird, sleepless, alcohol-y, highs and lows of playing big shows and having the down part in the car. It’s great, I’m very grateful to be in this position but a lot of it is about learning how to look after yourself mentally and physically. I realised my back was f--ked and I carry all my stress in my shoulders and I was like AHHHH, so angry (self-deprecating laugh). Everyone was like ‘What’s wrong with you? Chill out’.”
That must be one of the most difficult things, the expectation of you to be happy about climbing the indie rock totem pole when you’ve only slept four proper hours in three nights..
“That’s the thing because you’re travelling the world playing music to people and I have the perspective of being incredibly lucky and I do feel that. It’s about being nice to yourself and letting yourself peace out when you want to and be happy when you want to. It’s a really amazing existence.”
In the Paul Kelly: Stories of Me documentary his son Declan spoke of his wonder that such a big, organised group of people would travel around the country with all this equipment and set up a stage and go to all this trouble just to play for…45 minutes and then pack it all down and do the same thing the next day. Second thing on that, Ian Astbury from The Cult said in an interview ‘Why have a buried 16 of my friends? What is this thing called rock’n’roll? Why does it take away so many of my friends?’
“It shouldn’t work like that. It’s hard to live like that.”
Stage-wise, show-wise, have you picked up any tricks on your travels?
“We watched Tweedy play…somewhere and Jeff Tweedy is an idol of mine. There was nothing major but watching him be so relaxed and comfortable on stage and the way he was joking with the audience, it was a really really quiet audience and he was like ‘F--king, what’s wrong with you?’ I thought it was really funny, there was no fear of saying what he thinks. I love that everyone is so different on stage. At Laneway St Vincent was totally incredible and has a different vibe to Mac DeMarco but both incredible in their own way. I admire them both for the way they do things. I think ‘Do I need to be more perfect? Do I need to be more wacky?’ And then I just realised I just need to be me and then I don’t think about it.”
REVIEW:
Sometimes I Sit and Think, And Sometimes I Just Sit (Remote Control/Milk!)
4.5 stars
Courtney Barnett has gone from pulling frothy beers to frothing crowds in less than two years. Astonishing, really. Right sound, right time, right ‘tude.
Classic albums are full of tiny triumphs where the alchemy of words and music make your voice crack when you try and tell someone about it. This is a classic debut LP that reminds you stillness is the move.
Barnett gives good vocal fry on Small Poppies, a weeping willow, Tamworth-y number that sways back and forth in line with her confidence levels, “an eye for an eye for an eye, I used to hate myself now I think I’m all right.” Probably the Australian Song of the Year.
Fun fact: since 1985 salaries in Australia have increased by about 25% while property prices have shot up around 125%. Gahhhd. Depreston hits a nerve as Barnett moves through a house, transitioning from potential buyer to melancholy voyeur. We’ve all been dying since the day we were born, after all. Or as Barnett puts it “I’m growing older every time I blink my eyes.”
Aqua Profunda is proud to swim in the shallow end, it’s a dinky bubblegum pop number that gives us time to cool off from her loquacious monologues.
Dead Fox dips its foot in conspiracy theories “A friend told me they stick nicotine in the apples” and then smears our eyes with “a possum Jackson Pollock is painted on the tar.”
NB: Barnett doesn’t talk down to her listeners, she trusts the songs to “work” on two levels while she “plays.”
Kim’s Caravan begins with Tool-like (!) bedspring scurrying, and builds a Nirvana Unplugged soundbed (Barnett took up the guitar left-handed because of Kurt) as she sings of the great barrier reef/grief. A+.
Sounds like: A rocking, rollicking, roiling record
In a word: Profunda.
Australian shows: Wrestpoint, Hobart. April 24; The Gov, Adelaide, May 1; The Bakery, Perth, May 2; The Metro, Sydney, May 8; The Hifi, Brisbane, May 15-16.
facebook.com/courtneybarnettmusic
Follow your loving, sorta profound scribe Mikey Cahill here twitter.com/joeylightbulb
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