Taken from the album ‘Sometimes I Sit And Think, And Sometimes I Just Sit’, Australian singer songwriter Courtney Barnett has shared the video for the seven-minute ‘Kim’s Caravan’.
Described by Barnett as “an apocalyptic tale of our world painted black with oil and soot, painted red with blood and greed”, in the video for the slow-burning, atmospheric track (around which she sings of the destruction of The Great Barrier Reef and pollution), directed by Bec Kingma and shot on Philip Island, we see shots of Barnett near desolate beach-side tourist spots and playgrounds.
Kingma explains her interpretation of the lyrics: “In conceptualizing a film clip for the track I am keen to explore the adult attempt to return to that place of childish innocence. If you have ever returned to a childhood holiday haunt in the offseason, it’s likely you’ve discovered the sad realisation that the place barely resembles your idyllic memories. As grown ups we all yearn for a time and place where our biggest concerns were the sand in our bathers and the mosquito’s eating us alive.”
‘Kim’s Caravan’ will be released on Record Store Day, April 18, as a 12″. The B-side is her cover of John Cale’s ‘Close Watch’.
Courtney Barnett Singer songwriter and Australian rocker has been known to turn the simple things she observes in life into meaningful stories. With her new album, “Sometimes I Sit And Think, And Sometimes I Just Sit”, she goes house hunting, debates going to a party and tries to impress the person doing laps next to her in the pool. But these everyday activities equate to much larger statements.has been wowing us of late and whilst on tour in the UK we couldn’t pass up the chance of getting her into one of our studios for a session on Amazing Radio.
Yesterday’s party also featured Speedy Ortiz (featuring Hannibal Buress!), Rae Sremmurd, Courtney Barnett, Sophie, A. G. Cook, Viet Cong, Shamir, Son Lux, Natalie Prass, Lydia Ainsworth, Torres, and Steve Gunn. Stay tuned for more video.Today’s lineup includes both Arcade Fire’s Win Butler (as DJ Windows 98) and Will Butler (doing separate sets), Vince Staples, Migos, Hundred Waters, Waxahatchee, Title Fight, Alvvays, Twerps, Untold, Makthaverskan, and Bully.
Courtney Barnett’s debut album, “Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit”, is now available to listen too ahead of its official release. The album is officially out on 23rd March, Its rambling, but insightful lyrics, which manage to inject heart and soul into the most mundane subject matters, are part of what makes this album such a triumph. Highlights include ‘Pedestrian At Best’, with its infinitely relateable refrain, “Put me on a pedestal and I’ll only disappoint you”, and ‘Nobody Really Cares If You Don’t Go To The Party’.
Australian singer-songwriter Courtney Barnett performs “Pedestrian at Best” from her album Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit at the Ace Hotel in Shoreditch, east London, in a live session recorded exclusively for the Guardian. Known for her deadpan, rambling delivery, Courtney’s music focuses on the mundane, overlooked details of everyday life
Taken from the LP: “Sometimes I Sit And Think, And Sometimes I Just Sit”
Released on March 23rd Worldwide (March 20th in Australia/NZ) Courtney Barnett has a new album coming out soon, and that is a reason to be excited that you are a living human being with functional ears. Barnett’s already earned herself an Album Of The Week thanks to 2013’s great The Double EP: A Sea Of Split Peas, but her forthcoming Sometimes I Sit And Think, And Sometimes I Just Sit is actually her official full-length debut. We’ve posted the awesome first single “Pedestrian At Best,” previously and now she’s followed it up with this awesome track “Depreston,” a lovely, ambling, finely observed song about moving to California and then realizing that you are in a sad, sad place.and with a video of front lawns,
Pre-order “Sometimes I Sit And Think, And Sometimes I Just Sit”:
KEXP presents Courtney Barnett performing live at the Triple Door as part of KEXP’s VIP Club concert series. Recorded July 7, 2014.
Welcome to the world of Courtney Barnett, a hot, hazy place where ‘suburban banalities’ and ‘mindless procrastination’ have never sounded so compelling. Mixing witty, often hilarious, occasionally even heartbreaking observations with devastating self-assessment, Courtney Barnett’s debut album, “Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit”, cements her standing as one of the most distinctive and compelling voices in indie rock. These songs reveal not only an assured songwriter and guitar player, but also an artist who in just a few years has already proved highly influential.
Fueled by the nimble crunch of her guitar and the loose groove of the rhythm section, Courtney Barnett’s songs are wild and shaggy and wordy, her lyrics plainspoken and delivered like she’s making them up on the spot. The music is rooted in the slack jangle of the late 1980s and the early 1990s, which has prompted the adjective “slacker” from journalists and critics around the world. That word is fitting for tunes that sound like they only just roused themselves out of bed. As a description of Barnett’s work ethic and musical influence, however, “slacker” is all wrong.
Even just a few years into a solo career, she has already proved herself an idiosyncratic and boundary-smashing artist and a passionate advocate for the arts who is changing the face of indie rock in her native Australia and around the world. After leaving art-school in Hobart, Tasmania, Barnett moved to Melbourne and became a mainstay of the local scene. She paid her dues and honed her chops in short-lived garage outfits before playing lead guitar in the twang-psych band Immigrant Union (which featured Bob Harrow and the Dandy Warhols’ Brent DeBoer).
When she went solo, Barnett launched her own label, which she dubbed Milk! Records, to release her own material as well as music by some of Melbourne’s finest singers and songwriters. With the 2013 release of The Double EP: A Sea of Split Peas (which combined her first two self-released EPs), she embarked on an almost never-ending tour that took her to North America and Europe, barely stopping long enough to record her first true album.
Her songs may not sound tightly coiled, but they are carefully and exactingly structured. Her lyrics may ramble, but each word is carefully chosen. She is, however, no perfectionist. In fact, she may be an imperfectionist: Barnett strives to fine-tune her songs as much as possible, but she knows that their flaws—a missed note here, a flubbed line there—can make the music sound more human, more relatable, more sympathetic. “My songs follow me as a normal human with normal emotions,” she explains, “so there are great highs and great lows. They span everything in my life.”
Barnett and her band—which includes Dan Luscombe on guitar and the surprisingly nimble rhythm section of Bones Sloane on bass and Dave Mudie on drums—recorded the album at Head Gap Studio in Melbourne during the fall of 2014. “We’d start midday and work until quite early in the morning,” she says. “Of course, half the time is sitting around waiting for the engineer to get a mic into place or something like that.” The band used the downtime to take these songs apart and put them back together again. Nothing was taken on faith; every note and every word was parsed.
“We didn’t just go in and bang it out. We mucked around with it. There was the panic of not having the songs prepared, but I think that energy works for the album. And we were drinking a lot of coffee.” (The process was documented by photographer Tajette O’Halloran, whose images are included in the liner notes.)
Barnett took drastic measures to make sure every song came out as perfectly imperfect as possible. When “Pedestrian At Best” wasn’t working out in the studio, she took the backing tracks home with her and listened to them over and over and over, trying to get the right words to come out of her mouth. “I had some words on paper and a half-assed melody that I hated,” she recalls. “I rapped over it until I found something I was happy with. It’s an embarrassing process, though, and the first time I sang that song was when I recorded it. I had to make everyone leave the room, because I felt really vulnerable.”
No nerves are evident in the final take, which includes some of Barnett’s most incisively indecisive lyrics, crammed with internal rhymes, inside jokes, and stinging self-deprecation. “I must confess I’ve made a mess of what should be a small success, but I digress. At least I tried my very best… I guess.”
Writing these songs can be a drawn-out and nerve-wracking process, especially when she finds herself recording a song that she hasn’t written yet, but it pays off beautifully on Sometimes I Sit and Think. It’s a beguiling collection of songs that reveals her as an ambitious songwriter with an ear for clever turns of phrase and an eye for story-song details that are literate without being pretentious.
Barnett even did the artwork and hand lettering for the liner notes, showcasing a whimsical style similar to indie comics or the sketches of Eric Chase Anderson (who does most of the sketches for his brother Wes’ films).
Now that these songs are on record, she will not stop tweaking and perfecting them. The more she lives with them—the more she plays them out, the more fans react to them—the more alive they sound to her, often disclosing new meanings and direr implications. “They keep revealing themselves,” she says.
“They change from touring and recording. They morph and change form and can end up sounding completely different. I hope it’s like that forever.”
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
Comprised of previously released EPs and previously released as an album overseas before finally receiving a stateside street date from Mom + Pop records in 2014, “A Sea of Split Peas” it’s the kind of album that withstands endlessly repeated listens, it doesn’t much matter. Serving as Australian Courtney Barnett’s debut,
A Sea Of Split Peas introduces the world to the (s)lackadaisical troubadour’s unforgettable steez: droll and dreamy, with the perfectly worn feel of your favorite hoodie. CourtneyBarnett plays guitar and sings, and the shrug with which she delivers her wry observations obscures how incisive they can be. “I’m having trouble breathing in,” she frets, ostensibly about an asthma attack, on “Avant Gardner,” a rolling, note-perfect rock song wherein a well-intentioned day in the yard becomes a metaphor for just trying to get by in the world. Such gems abound on Peas, sprouting like the vegetables Barnett so earnestly wishes she could grow. Courtney Barnett is an Australian singer-songwriter and guitarist from Melbourne. Known for her witty, rambling lyrics and deadpan singing style,
Taken from the LP: “Sometimes I Sit And Think, And Sometimes I Just Think” – Released on March 23rd
Courtney Barnett has announced details of her debut full-length, ‘Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit’. The follow-up to ‘The Double EP: A Sea of Split Peas’ from 2013 The new album is available on House Anxiety Records / Marathon Artists. The Lead track ‘Pedestrian At Best’ leads the record. It premiered as a Hottest Record on Zane Lowe’s Radio 1 show, with an accompanying video. Take everything from the Aussie’s first two EPs, up every single aspect: The volume, the intensity the full-band mentality, the cutting lyricism – that’s the new song in a nutshell. It also contains the phrase “put me on a pedestal, I’ll only disappoint you,” which is totally incorrect. the song “grabs and snags with every memorable little snippet, plucked direct from Courtney Barnett’s barnet-full of wry observations. Courtney talks through the new song and the rest of her album. “I showed the riff to the band and we kind of jammed on it; but I couldn’t think of a melody, or a chorus, or any lyrics at all. When we recorded it I just set down a structure, and wrote the lyrics later that night, to the music. It’s how I did the EP single ‘Avant Gardener’ too, and a few other times. it feels like you’re working on a song that’s already been written. You have the luxury to sing over the top of it.
The Fat Angel Sings 