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WORDS: LAURA COLLINS. PHOTOGRAPHY: GETTY IMAGES
LOST IN THOUGHT
“Growing up, I was a real bookworm – I went to the library every day after school,” says Courtney Barnett. “My life was reading, sport and homework. I didn’t start playing guitar until I was 10.” Who would have guessed she’d end up, some 18 years later, with four ARIAs on her mantelpiece, an 8.6 album rating from Pitchfork (which is huge, by the way) and the entire music industry watching her every move? On her debut album Sometimes I Sit And Think, And Sometimes I Just Sit, Barnett sings about the world she sees through cynical eyes (and beneath an increasingly disobedient fringe), her internal monologue approach to songwriting part of her appeal. She encapsulates the banality of house-hunting in the track “Depreston”, her rambling lyric recitation swinging effortlessly from low-key pop to slacker rock. And last June, US Rolling Stone called “Pedestrian At Best” the best song of the year so far, saying Barnett makes music sound “insultingly easy”. The Melbourne girl – a former bartender at Northcote Social Club – has performed on Ellen and at Glastonbury, and will soon wrap up another epic Australian tour. But ask the 28-year-old what she thinks of her success and she simply says, “Yeah, I dunno what it is. I mean, the success is great, if that means we can travel and play songs to people.” Courtney Barnett plays Twilight At Taronga in Sydney on January 28; twilightattaronga.org.au