Australian Courtney Barnett and AmericanKurt Vile may be separated by entire oceans and continents, but they’ve found a way to turn the story of their long-distance friendship into a sweet little melody—that is, the newest single from their forthcoming collaboration album Lotta Sea Lice, “Continental Breakfast.”
Accompanying the track is a video that features rare footage of each of the slacker-rock idols in their respective natural habitats: Barnett exchanges kisses with her partner and her cat, tends to her garden and plays basketball with her friends, while Vile chugs four beers, goes on a nature walk and hangs out with his family.
To shoot the video, director Danny Cohen spent time with Barnett and Vile in Melbourne and Philadelphia while they had time off from recording and touring: The Video is Shot on 16mm, the mini-documentary captures honest moments that show the loving and playful nature of both Courtney and Kurt. It was such a treat to experience life with Courtney and Kurt in their natural habitats. It really left me feeling like part of the family and hopefully fans can feel that too.”
‘Continental Breakfast’ is taken from Courtney Barnett & Kurt Vile’s upcoming album ‘Lotta Sea Lice’
Sometimes, a break is called for. Possibly to give an artist a pause for breath, or equally maybe to give the audience a time to reflect, and begin longing for the next thing. For the Princess of Brunswick and environs, Courtney Barnett, this year has seen an almost deliberately lower profile, possibly to recover from that period where the world went crazy for this talented Australian who seemed to be touring ever since. There’s still been room for special occasions – like, you’re not going to knock back singing with Patti Smith now are you? Or the chance to be part of a series of vinyl Split Singles between Barnett and consort Jen Cloher’s Milk! Records cottage industry and the Brisbane’s label of similar attitude, So, a new Barnett tune is here.
A new oldsong called How To Boil An Egg for the Milk Records and Bedroom Suck collaboration SplitSingles Club!
Courtney says: I used to perform this song at all the open-mics when i was 21. It never got recorded, so for personal-posterity i updated it and made this version recently when I was bunkered up in the bush doin some demos for my next album. In tradition of the Milk! Records compilation releases, like “Pickles From The Jar” or “Three Packs A Day”, i wanted to include a song of mine for Split Singles Club that was a tad left of album-centre. it’s a songwriting experiment that doesn’t really belong anywhere else.
Well, kinda. How To Boil An Egg (Milk Records!) is a perfect title for the artist, but the tune in fact dates back to her early open-mic days, here recorded for the first time with herself singing and playing everything on it. There’s a slight country twang to it, and her usual eye that can make mundane minutiae so interesting. And don’t forget to flip said record over to hear the also damn good Blank Realm, who have a scruffy charm of their own.
Courtney Barnett started Milk! Records in 2012 to release her first EP I’ve Got A Friend Called Emily Ferris. Soon aftercame the second EP How To Carve A Carrot Into A Rose. She took her band overseas with a condensed back catalogue called The Double EP: A Sea Of Split Peas. In 2015 Barnett released album Sometimes I Sit And Think, And Sometimes I Just Sit to worldwide critical acclaim. the Australian storyteller who loves to rock hard and help give Melbourne a good name.
A live record in remembrance of a great gig and this is worth hearing though Courtney is not at her best. She’s more restrained than when I saw her and the band could be better, But the lyrics remain clever and funny and it’s great when the demi-goddess of the guitar revs up.
Recorded on Thursday 24th April, 2014 At Electric Lady Studios, New York By Phil Joly, Chief Engineer ,To a live studio audience, broadcast on WFUV
The Band
Guitar: Courtney Barnett
Bass: Bones Sloane
Drums: Dave Mudie
Courtney Barnetts Milk! Records, the label she started when her career was just beginning, is about to release their second compilation after 2014s A Pair Of Pears (With Shadows) entitled Good For You. The compilation will feature artists like, Fraser A. Gorman, Ouch My Face, Jen Cloher, the Finks, and the East Brunswick All Girls Choir. Courtney herself contributed a track of her own,Three Packs A Day which you can listen to right now.
The hush-hush Secret World Premier showcase of Courtney Barnett’s hot debut “Sometimes I Sit And Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit”. Courtney Barnett’s fellow stablemate on Milk Records, Fraser A Gorman and his band warm up tonight’s stage. Looking every bit like a young electric Bob Dylan, Fraser belts out a short but entertaining set, previewing tracks from his as yet unreleased debut album ‘Slow Gun’
The main event, however, is of course Courtney Barnett. Tonight she and band are a threesome, with the added Drones’ guitarist Dan Luscombe (who guested on the album sessions) in the audience but notably absent on stage. No worries here though. Barnett does an admirable job of exerting her presence on her two left-handed guitars: a lovely white Jaguar and her trusty black Telecaster.
From the outset, Courtney’s charm is obvious. For my money, the potent combination of her stage persona and delivery puts her somewhere between a self-assured young Chrissie Hynde and the witty lyricism of Elvis Costello. Every track is generously peppered with little everyday observations – every detail is deftly distilled.
Witness the first track of the evening ‘Elevator Operator’.
She rattles through the album in track order, stopping only briefly to remark, ‘ this is fun …but it’s weird…I’m not gonna lie…I’m nervous and excited at the same time…” and then later, “Dad says he likes ‘Pedestrian at Best’ but reckons it’s a bit too ‘yelly’.
She then breaks into what is to be my favourite song of the evening, “Dead Fox” featuring a brilliant lyric inspired by the visibility signs on Lindsay Fox trucks, with the catchy chorus “If you can’t see me, I can’t see you”.
Another memorable track of the evening is “Depreston”, a song already released and currently trending on social media. It’s essentially the story of Courtney house-hunting and seeing some potential in a deceased estate. The catchy hook: “If you’ve got a spare half a million, you could knock it down and start re-building” still had us singing it on the way back to the station to catch the last train home.
Tonight’s showcase aptly demonstrates that Courtney is well into her own journey. Ever questing, ever exploring. In fact on the track ‘Small Poppies’ she sings almost auto-biographically: “I don’t know quite who I am, oh but man I am trying. I make mistakes until I get it right.”
Courtney Barnett performing live at the Triple Door as part of KEXP’s VIP Club concert series. Recorded July 7th, 2014.
Songs:
Lance Jr.
Don’t Apply Compression Gently
Scotty Says
Canned Tomatoes (Whole)
David
Are You Looking After Yourself?
Out of the Woodwork
Avant Gardener
History Eraser
If SXSW had an indie-darling award, it would most certainly be given to this Aussie rocker. She’s received attention from Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, Spin, and she’s even in the next issue of PG. The three aforementioned mags fluttered over her painfully plain yet deeply reflective lyrics that are delivered deadpan as if Courtney Barnett was comedian Steven Wright’s long-lost Australian daughter. The reason PG has taken note is for her ability to barely harness distorted feedback in intensifying crushers like “Small Poppies” and “Kim’s Caravan.” But we also love her softer songwriter side, wrapped in warbling tremolo and warm chorus bubbles showcased in tracks like “Depreston.” With her knockout debut album dropped last month and a slew of American TV and festival appearances, it looks like Barnett will be stateside for as long as she can stand it.
“I pretty much only use two guitars while touring—a Fender American Standard Telecaster and a FenderClassic Player Jaguar Special. The Tele is the one I play the most and is set aside for bluesier songs like ‘AvantGardner,’ ‘Lance Jr.,’ and ‘David,’ whereas the Jag is for the dingy songs that need some wonky tremolo arm stuff like ‘Aqua Profunda!’
I used to just use a delay to muffle everything and an overdrive for the heavy bits, but recently I’ve started toying with a few new things, thanks to my bandmate Dan Luscombe. I love the tackiness and novelty sound and feel of the Boss CH-1 Super Chorus—or the chorus effect in general—but it does make me feel the three piece is bigger than it really is, and everything sounds a little wonky like it’s coming out the chimney of a lopsided ship. I’ve always been a fan of the tremolo effect, but I haven’t been able to make the Behringer Ultra Tremolo sound as cool as I’d like. I’m sure it’s my fault—not the pedal. The Fulltone OCD is huge and filthy. I have it on the low switch because I keep my guitars super treble-y and I don’t want to overdo it. The Electro-Harmonix Little Big Muff Pi is so, so rough. It’s so rough that sometimes I can’t hear it—it’s like a hidden undertone of the devil in the way dogs can only hear super high notes, but that’s no use in a mega-loud jam because I just feel like my guitar has disappeared. The other pedals I have on my board are a Boss BD-2 Blues Driver and a Boss TU-3 Tuner. And I recently starting messing around with a Broadcast Hard On A/B box so I can run two amps onstage to help with monitor volumes, switching guitars, and tuning in between songs.”
It’s a shame Patti Smith left Australia off the schedule when planning her Horses 40th anniversary tour, but then again, it would have meant that the pearl of this year’s Melbourne Festival program, a tribute concert performed by Jen Cloher, Courtney Barnett, Adalita Srsen and Gareth Liddiard,
So appealing was the idea of four of our finest musicians interpreting Smith’s landmark proto-punk debut, organisers had to add a second matinee show to next Sunday’s performance at Melbourne Town Hall.
It was Cloher who came up with the idea after attending a tribute to the Beatles’ White Album at Hamer Hall last year, “It was packed to the rafters, I was like, ‘wow’, but I also thought it would be so good to do an album by a woman,” says Cloher.
“And when you think about iconic rock ‘n’ roll albums by women, there are iconic albums out there but I think Horses is considered one of the great rock ‘n’ roll albums.” .Barnett wasn’t so willing to go to that place until recently. She recalls considering covering Horses for the Summer of Classic Albums series hosted by St Kilda’s Pure Pop Records last year. After a closer look at Smith’s lyrics, she chose INXS’ Kick instead.
“I also think that’s why that album is so famous and why Patti is so famous within that world of rock ‘n’ and roll, because she does invest her entire being when she’s on stage performing, she doesn’t hold anything back.”
Nothing like a dramatically lit pipe organ to imbue a classic rock recital with portent. It felt like a cathedral we’d packed to the balconies as the first, slow piano chords began cycling and Adalita paced the stage to intone Patti Smith’s immortal opening line. “Jesus died for somebody’s sins but not mine.”
By accident and/or osmosis, Adalita’s booming timbre struck an uncanny resonance with the hellfire stridency of Smith’s Gloria as she stalked and glowered in skirt, boots and bracing command.
Hunched by contrast in grunge flannel and jeans, Courtney Barnett howled Redondo Beach at her own distinctively defiant pitch, with the schoolyard-scrap indignation that makes her such a compelling one-off.
Gareth Liddiard’s advantages included a guitar and premeditated chemistry with fellow Drones Dan Luscombe and Steve Hesketh, but most of all a song that fit his shredded larynx like he’d gargled it as a baby: Birdland erupted in slashing waves as he threw every sinew into living its shamanistic dream.
Speaking of commitment, Jen Cloher had the toughest part and maybe the most triumphant with the escalating palpitations of Land, its long lines delivered as faithful homage but with an air of exaltation that was all her own.
An all-in thrash through My Generation threw a last can of fuel on an act of slow combustion that felt like it had been simmering for 40 years.
Performed by Gareth Liddiard
Guitar – Dan Luscombe
Drums – Jen Sholakis
Bass – Ben Bourke
Keys – Stevie Hesketh
Courtney Barnett performs “Pedestrian At Best” live at Rock The Garden 2015.
Rock the Garden is a co-presentation by 89.3 The Current and Walker Art Center, Nothing like a little bit of quintessential “fuck you” to lead the genre this year. Barnett’s lead single from her excellent Sometimes I Sit andThink, and Sometimes I Just Sit has everything you need in a good rock song: loud, abrasive and otherwise unrelenting riffs and a target—in this case, the music industry—we can all agree is outrageous.
To celebrate 40 years since the release of Patti Smith’s seminal album HORSES Milk! Records in partnership with Melbourne Festival performed two tribute shows at the Melbourne Town Hall on Sunday the 18th of October 2015. Courtney’s and her band performed a cover of Patti Smith‘s ‘Redondo Beach.’ Now, Barnett’s own label Milk! Records have released footage from the evening, including a full performance of ‘Redondo Beach’.
The performance took place at a special tribute concert held by Barnett to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Patti Smith’s debut album ‘Horses.’ Barnett played ‘Horses’ in full and was joined by Jen Cloher, Magic Dirt’sAdalita and The Drones’ Gareth Liddiard for the one-off show. Courtney Barnett released her debut album ‘Sometimes I Sit And Think, And Sometimes I Just Sit’ in March. she explained how the LP reflected the last year of her life.
“The album is a general overview of essentially a year of emotions – 12 months of fucking every day day, up, down, up, down. I dunno what a normal person has, but everyday I had a midlife crisis.”
Courtney Barnett and her band play their biggest UK headline show to date at London’s Forum on November 25th with gigs in Wolverhampton, Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow and Bristol also confirmed.
For more on Milk! Records http://www.milkrecords.com.au
Directed by Joshua Aylett @ Tourist
Camera Operators: Alex Cardy, David Rusanow, Maximillian Mein
Live Mix Tim Symonds for ABC Radio National ‘The Live Set’.
Post Mix Matthew Neighbour
Performed by Courtney Barnett
Guitar – Dan Luscombe
Drums – Jen Sholakis
Bass – Ben Bourke
Keys – Stevie Hesketh
Courtney Barnett covers Rowland S. Howard’s ‘Shivers’ (originally performed by The Boys Next Door). This track is the B-side to ‘Boxing Day Blues Revisited’, pre-order the 7″vinyl via Third Man Records here: http://thirdmanstore.com/courtney-bar… Courtney announced a Third Man Records Blue Series single, with “Boxing Day Blues Revisited” on the A-side. The flip is this cover of Boys Next Doors’ “Shivers,” which was originally sung by fellow Aussie Nick Cave.
Courtney Barnett – Guitar & Vocals
Bones Sloane – Bass Guitar
Dave Mudie – Drums
The Fat Angel Sings 