Melbourne, Australia’s Courtney Barnett, singer-songwriter, guitar virtuoso, visual artist and label owner whose 2013 release The Double EP: A Sea of Split Peas set the music world alight, is releasing her debut LP Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit on March 24 via Mom + Pop Music.
Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit chronicles several years in the life of Courtney Barnett, mixing witty, often hilarious, occasionally heartbreaking observations with devastating self-assessment. It’s a pivotal album that cements her standing as one of the most distinctive and compelling voices in rock music, revealing not only an assured songwriter and guitar player but also an artist who in just a few years has already proved highly influential. Rolling Stone recently featured Barnett in a “Breaking” spotlight calling the forthcoming debut”one of 2015′s most anticipated indie releases.”
“Pedestrian at Best”, the first single from the record, was released today with the accompanying video via Courtney Barnett’s site. The song and video both capture Barnett’s self-deprecating and signature style with incisively indecisive lyrics, crammed with internal rhymes, and inside jokes: “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.”
Fueled by the crunch of guitars and the loose groove of the rhythm section, Barnett’s songs are wild and wooly and wordy, her lyrics plainspoken and delivered like she’s making them up on the spot. 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.
The songs may not sound tightly coiled, but they are carefully and exactingly structured. Her lyrics may ramble, but each word is carefully chosen. “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.”
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