Library Rock's Backpages

Courtney Barnett: Tell Me How You Really Feel

Alfred Soto, Spin, 14 June 2018

TO BE COURTNEY BARNETT and learn that Liz Phair released the Girly-Sound to Guyville set is like being Bryan Ferry and opening your door to greet a tuxedoed Cary Grant singing 'Happy Birthday'. The Australian singer-songwriter depends on a similarly thin rhythm part strummed on her electric guitar, and like Phair on 1993's galvanic Exile in Guyville, Barnett's 2015 debut Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit used chord patterns into whose melodic spaces Barnett poured curt anecdotes about existential trouble and origami — can there be a more dangerous combination?

Total word count of piece: 599

Subscribe

Becoming a member is easy. Membership gives you access to all the thousands of articles in the library.

Click here to go to Subscribe page.

Click here for academic and other group subscriptions.