On the third day of Christmas

On the third day of Christmas My Truelove sent to me

Read from 131 reviews

Australian singer/ songwriter guitarist Courtney Barnett has taken the pop world by storm this Christmas with only one album and a couple of EPs under her belt.

       She is like Australia’s Lorde, only a decade older and only marginally connected musically and lyrically.

       So strike that comparison. Except both are talented wordsmiths, there is not much connection between Lorde and Barnett. I don’t know why I brought it up.

A great singer songwriter 

Maybe it’s because I don’t really dig other Barnett comparisons made with oldies Dylan, Lou Reed, Neil Young and Joni Mitchell.

       Anyway, comparisons are odious. This album Sometimes I Sit And Think, And Sometimes I Just Sit made me laugh in lots of places and made me ponder in others and just enjoy the music much of the times.

       Barnett is a competent musician with an attractive though unusual voice and a great storyteller.

       I do know where she gets some of her lyrics. You read “if you can’t see me, I can’t see you” on the back of a truck. I have never quite figured out what it meant in terms of trucks in traffic, something about mirrors. But as a relationship metaphor it’s cool. The lyric is in Dead Fox one of my two favourite songs on the 11-track album.

        My fave is Depreston an ambivalent look at the world-wide phenomenon of the young cool people – those who must wear black, I call them affectionately in my novel Iraqi Icicle  -  being forced out financially of the inner-city and having to conquer inner-suburbia.

Other songs contain lyrical gems such at the dredgers treating the Great Barrier Reef like a whore. (Kim’s Caravan.)

       Most of the music is blues-infused guitar rock and that’s just fine with me.

Adele is #1 at Amazon: read the reviews

       One surprise is that consumers taking up Sometimes I Sit And Think, And Sometimes I Just Sit are also buying Adele’s 25.

       When you look at the reviews on Amazon you might be perverse like me and insist on reading the one-star nasties.

       Some people are convinced Barnett is just a fad who will pass quickly. I doubt this.

If you wish to give someone an album that is a little different this Christmas, this one fits the bill.

 

Our song

 

Here is a bottler song which is not on the album. “The paramedic thinks I’m clever ‘cause I play guitar. I think she’s clever ‘cause she stops people dying.”