Courtney Barnett (2015)
Interview Background
I’d interviewed Courtney Barnett six months before this interview while she was still touring The Double EP: A Sea Of Split Peas, but now the momentum was starting to get really crazy for the Melbourne-based songwriter. In the wake of the Avant Gardener single earning global praise, her fanbase had ballooned from indie Triple J fans to surprising celebrities and tastemakers. The fandom of President Barack Obama wasn’t public knowledge yet, but foreign media were tying themselves in knots over Barnett’s music. Fawning stories found journalists routinely perplexed by Barnett’s humble ordinariness, instead depicting her as if the down-to-earth Aussie performer was from a mythical locale as exotic as Westeros. Back chatting with Barnett as she prepared to tour her debut album Sometimes I Sit And Think, And Sometimes I Just Sit, Barnett showed no signs of having let the added attention change her outward outlook, even if there was a hint that underneath it all she too was confused by the heightened attention. Just a year or two since she’d been waiting on drinkers at Melbourne’s Northcote Social Club, Courtney was about to become Australia’s most critically acclaimed alternative music export since Tame Impala.
The following is an edited version of an interview first published in mX, April 2015.
Courtney Barnett - Supreme Courts
by Scott McLennan
According to Melbourne songwriter Courtney Barnett, Christopher Walken is the patron saint of the unemployed. Years before she performed live on The Ellen Degeneres Show and hit number one on the Billboard Alternative Chart with her new album Sometimes I Sit And Think, And Sometimes I Just Sit, Barnett turned to the veteran Hollywood actor to banish her jobless blues.
“Christopher Walken is great,” Barnett says of the Pulp Fiction and The Deer Hunter star. “Once when I didn’t have a job I Googled him and got a list of every film he’d been in, then I watched every single one, including the ones where he just has a walk-on role.”
With more than 130 film credits to her 72-year-old idol’s name, Barnett’s viewing list unfortunately included turkeys such as Click, Joe Dirt and Blast From The Past.
“Yeah, there were a couple of bad ones!” the guitarist laughs.
The days of under-employment and lazing on the couch are but a distant memory for the 26-year-old musician. Despite her lyrics cleverly fixating on incidental urban humdrum, Barnett’s impressive work ethic contradicts her portrayal in some circles as a bogan slacker. mX’s phone interview catches Barnett enjoying a rare morning lie-in in her Northcote bed, but her current album tour sees her hit 40 international cities before July’s end.
“I’ve been working like crazy,” she concurs. “I started Milk! Records a few years ago, so I’m basically self-employed. Any small business owner will tell you they work around the clock, but music is a crazy one, like a 24-hour job where there are always emails coming in, something going on, touring, rehearsing and travelling. But I feel it’s the luckiest job to have.”
In a music world dominated by hip hop braggarts and air-brushed pop dolls, Barnett cuts an unlikely figure. The odes to ordinariness on last year’s The Double EP: A Sea Of Split Peas release mesmerised tastemakers around the globe, with the US and the UK particularly smitten by the suburban realism of Barnett’s lyrics and her laconic, conversational Australian delivery. The March release of debut album Sometimes I Sit And Think, And Sometimes I Just Sit consolidated Barnett’s success, picking up the Grulke Award at Austin’s influential South By Southwest music conference (past winners: Damon Albarn, The Flaming Lips, Haim) and scoring an extraordinary 8.6/10 rating on notoriously sniffy website Pitchfork.
“The media interest doesn’t matter all that much,” Barnett says, downplaying the buzz she’s created. “The music is more important than that, so there’s really no point getting caught up in what some journalists are saying.”
Barnett says her family have always encouraged her music career, but appearances on Ellen or The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon mean less to them than a photo in the local newspaper.
“Their way of judging things is if they see me in The Age, that’s success,” Barnett says. “Since I was 18 and doing gigs they’ve always been super supportive, but I don’t know if they thought it was going to last and amount to this, considering the level of cool things we’ve done in the last couple of years.”
After years of scraping together a living working in bars in between musical commitments, Barnett’s fortunes have well and truly changed. While she’s thankful for her unexpected success, the songwriter’s already eyeing the calendar for a break in her album promotion. Once touring obligations subside, Barnett is looking forward to an outback getaway with her partner, fellow musician Jen Cloher.
“Towards the end of the year I’m going to go to the middle of Australia for six weeks or so. It’s not like a resort holiday or anything, in fact I’m looking forward to a lot of camping and shitty hostels – there’s always something that goes on that ends up as a good story. I love doing that. It’s stuff that makes me feel like a human again.”
Sometimes I Sit And Think, And Sometimes I Just Sit (Milk!/Remote Control)
Unpublished Interview Material
How was the 2015 Laneway Festival?
"It was amazing – the Melbourne show was so fun, but the entire festival was a pretty fun experience. Adelaide was so hot! Most of them were really hot, hey! That’s one of my biggest memories. After the Adelaide show I lay on the wharf and tipped water on me, but I saw a dolphin in the [Port] River there, so that made our day just before we went on."
fka twigs’ surname is also (Tahliah) Barnett – did you bond with her?
"I didn’t know until afterwards! I watched her set in Melbourne because I tried to watch something different every time and the different timetable allowed you to do that, but I didn’t get to talk to her. I think we missed a great opportunity. We’re completely different and I don’t think I could do what she does – she’s great at what she does."
Pickles From The Jar has the line ‘You’re from Adelaide, I’m from Hobart’, which matches the backgrounds of yourself and your partner Jen Cloher. Is it a love song?
"I guess it’s a love song, but a pretty shitty love song. It’s just a shit song I wrote in two seconds, so it’s light-hearted and fun. It doesn’t have any deeper meaning than that."
From the tone of the album it seems you aren’t a materialistic person?
"Totally. I just grew up never really having crazy amounts of money to buy all the things I wanted. When I moved to Melbourne and started paying rent, I’ve really only had enough money for rent, food, go and see a show and have some drinks every now and then. That’s been kind of it – I don’t have some crazy big record collection and I don’t really care that much either. I do have some records, but I somehow acquire things. My record player was from a friend of a friend who was throwing it out, my sweet speakers were from a friend who was upgrading and the records I have between me and Jen add up to a shelf of vinyl. I always find myself playing the Go-Betweens best-of – I think I’ll have to buy that new box set – and Dave [Mudie] gave me the Divinyls album Desperate, which I just fuckin’ love. I go back to that all the time – it’s insane. We’ve got a couple of Keith Jarrett records that are pretty peaceful to listen to."
So what is success to you? What has been the moment where you’ve allowed yourself a smile at what you’ve achieved?
"It’s a hard thing to measure and everyone has their own individual idea, but I don’t really know yet. For me it’s just writing a song I’m happy with and then recording it and being happy with that – it’s the highest form of success for me."
I’d interviewed Courtney Barnett six months before this interview while she was still touring The Double EP: A Sea Of Split Peas, but now the momentum was starting to get really crazy for the Melbourne-based songwriter. In the wake of the Avant Gardener single earning global praise, her fanbase had ballooned from indie Triple J fans to surprising celebrities and tastemakers. The fandom of President Barack Obama wasn’t public knowledge yet, but foreign media were tying themselves in knots over Barnett’s music. Fawning stories found journalists routinely perplexed by Barnett’s humble ordinariness, instead depicting her as if the down-to-earth Aussie performer was from a mythical locale as exotic as Westeros. Back chatting with Barnett as she prepared to tour her debut album Sometimes I Sit And Think, And Sometimes I Just Sit, Barnett showed no signs of having let the added attention change her outward outlook, even if there was a hint that underneath it all she too was confused by the heightened attention. Just a year or two since she’d been waiting on drinkers at Melbourne’s Northcote Social Club, Courtney was about to become Australia’s most critically acclaimed alternative music export since Tame Impala.
The following is an edited version of an interview first published in mX, April 2015.
Courtney Barnett - Supreme Courts
by Scott McLennan
According to Melbourne songwriter Courtney Barnett, Christopher Walken is the patron saint of the unemployed. Years before she performed live on The Ellen Degeneres Show and hit number one on the Billboard Alternative Chart with her new album Sometimes I Sit And Think, And Sometimes I Just Sit, Barnett turned to the veteran Hollywood actor to banish her jobless blues.
“Christopher Walken is great,” Barnett says of the Pulp Fiction and The Deer Hunter star. “Once when I didn’t have a job I Googled him and got a list of every film he’d been in, then I watched every single one, including the ones where he just has a walk-on role.”
With more than 130 film credits to her 72-year-old idol’s name, Barnett’s viewing list unfortunately included turkeys such as Click, Joe Dirt and Blast From The Past.
“Yeah, there were a couple of bad ones!” the guitarist laughs.
The days of under-employment and lazing on the couch are but a distant memory for the 26-year-old musician. Despite her lyrics cleverly fixating on incidental urban humdrum, Barnett’s impressive work ethic contradicts her portrayal in some circles as a bogan slacker. mX’s phone interview catches Barnett enjoying a rare morning lie-in in her Northcote bed, but her current album tour sees her hit 40 international cities before July’s end.
“I’ve been working like crazy,” she concurs. “I started Milk! Records a few years ago, so I’m basically self-employed. Any small business owner will tell you they work around the clock, but music is a crazy one, like a 24-hour job where there are always emails coming in, something going on, touring, rehearsing and travelling. But I feel it’s the luckiest job to have.”
In a music world dominated by hip hop braggarts and air-brushed pop dolls, Barnett cuts an unlikely figure. The odes to ordinariness on last year’s The Double EP: A Sea Of Split Peas release mesmerised tastemakers around the globe, with the US and the UK particularly smitten by the suburban realism of Barnett’s lyrics and her laconic, conversational Australian delivery. The March release of debut album Sometimes I Sit And Think, And Sometimes I Just Sit consolidated Barnett’s success, picking up the Grulke Award at Austin’s influential South By Southwest music conference (past winners: Damon Albarn, The Flaming Lips, Haim) and scoring an extraordinary 8.6/10 rating on notoriously sniffy website Pitchfork.
“The media interest doesn’t matter all that much,” Barnett says, downplaying the buzz she’s created. “The music is more important than that, so there’s really no point getting caught up in what some journalists are saying.”
Barnett says her family have always encouraged her music career, but appearances on Ellen or The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon mean less to them than a photo in the local newspaper.
“Their way of judging things is if they see me in The Age, that’s success,” Barnett says. “Since I was 18 and doing gigs they’ve always been super supportive, but I don’t know if they thought it was going to last and amount to this, considering the level of cool things we’ve done in the last couple of years.”
After years of scraping together a living working in bars in between musical commitments, Barnett’s fortunes have well and truly changed. While she’s thankful for her unexpected success, the songwriter’s already eyeing the calendar for a break in her album promotion. Once touring obligations subside, Barnett is looking forward to an outback getaway with her partner, fellow musician Jen Cloher.
“Towards the end of the year I’m going to go to the middle of Australia for six weeks or so. It’s not like a resort holiday or anything, in fact I’m looking forward to a lot of camping and shitty hostels – there’s always something that goes on that ends up as a good story. I love doing that. It’s stuff that makes me feel like a human again.”
Sometimes I Sit And Think, And Sometimes I Just Sit (Milk!/Remote Control)
Unpublished Interview Material
How was the 2015 Laneway Festival?
"It was amazing – the Melbourne show was so fun, but the entire festival was a pretty fun experience. Adelaide was so hot! Most of them were really hot, hey! That’s one of my biggest memories. After the Adelaide show I lay on the wharf and tipped water on me, but I saw a dolphin in the [Port] River there, so that made our day just before we went on."
fka twigs’ surname is also (Tahliah) Barnett – did you bond with her?
"I didn’t know until afterwards! I watched her set in Melbourne because I tried to watch something different every time and the different timetable allowed you to do that, but I didn’t get to talk to her. I think we missed a great opportunity. We’re completely different and I don’t think I could do what she does – she’s great at what she does."
Pickles From The Jar has the line ‘You’re from Adelaide, I’m from Hobart’, which matches the backgrounds of yourself and your partner Jen Cloher. Is it a love song?
"I guess it’s a love song, but a pretty shitty love song. It’s just a shit song I wrote in two seconds, so it’s light-hearted and fun. It doesn’t have any deeper meaning than that."
From the tone of the album it seems you aren’t a materialistic person?
"Totally. I just grew up never really having crazy amounts of money to buy all the things I wanted. When I moved to Melbourne and started paying rent, I’ve really only had enough money for rent, food, go and see a show and have some drinks every now and then. That’s been kind of it – I don’t have some crazy big record collection and I don’t really care that much either. I do have some records, but I somehow acquire things. My record player was from a friend of a friend who was throwing it out, my sweet speakers were from a friend who was upgrading and the records I have between me and Jen add up to a shelf of vinyl. I always find myself playing the Go-Betweens best-of – I think I’ll have to buy that new box set – and Dave [Mudie] gave me the Divinyls album Desperate, which I just fuckin’ love. I go back to that all the time – it’s insane. We’ve got a couple of Keith Jarrett records that are pretty peaceful to listen to."
So what is success to you? What has been the moment where you’ve allowed yourself a smile at what you’ve achieved?
"It’s a hard thing to measure and everyone has their own individual idea, but I don’t really know yet. For me it’s just writing a song I’m happy with and then recording it and being happy with that – it’s the highest form of success for me."
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