Courtney Barnett

When we dial in to the call, Barnett picks up first ring. She’s been waiting on the conference line, bopping along to “kind of jazzy” hold music and getting ready to play in Utrecht, part of a European stint in support of her second album ‘Tell Me How You Really Feel’.

The record, a tight 10 track blast, boils down the thickly layered metaphor of her first album and shows the perennially creative Australian at her most emotionally direct.

Gone are the intricate set pieces of “Sometimes I Sit…”, in their place carefully turned tracks that feel more open than anything she’s done before. In short - it’s a banger. We got on the line with Barnett and chatted about the album, her artwork and what’s been going on at ‘Milk!’.

Q: To kick off, the artwork on this new record is very different from anything you’ve done. You do it all yourself right?

A: The last couple of albums I’ve been drawing while I’ve been writing a lot, in tandem. As kind of the writing process. I do little pictures and little sentences here and there in my books and it all comes together when the album comes together.

This time I wasn’t really drawing anything, but I’d been taking lots of photos. I was doing this series of self portraits, while I was writing each day at the desk. I had all this polaroid film. So I was shooting each day at the desk. So the image was one from that series, and I think it just had this really, I don’t know, this strong sense to it. I liked how it was awkwardly cropped and a little bit too close and not really what you would want for an album cover.

There’s this kind of look in my eyes that, I don’t know, could kind of be interpreted in many ways. So I thought it was perfect for the album and the album title.

Illustration by Jean Jullien

Q: It’s seems very raw...

A: Yeah well it’s pretty real I guess. And even the treatment of the photo, it was. I didn’t Photoshop anything on it. I just scanned it, and laid the text over it. And that was it.

Q: You don’t seem like the kind of person who’d be too worried about Photoshop...

A: I don’t often really do it, every now and then if there’s some weird mark on my face in the photo I might ask for it, if it’s really big and weird. But not often. This was straight up. Which I like, I like the honesty of that. It goes in tandem with the album.

Q: The record itself seems to follow suit. It’s very direct. There aren’t so many of the set pieces or characters from the first one. Was that something you were conscious of when you were writing?

A: I wasn’t majorly conscious of it. I was writing with no intention and what came out came out. I’m not too sure… It was a lot more as it happened. Just trusting in the moment. I didn’t have a solid plan or things to kind of address. I only became aware of the songs as they became more final.

Q: Now the record’s out, have you been surprised by any of the reactions to it?

A: I’m always interested in what those interpretations are. But not surprised. I think I’m pretty open to it, so whatever people feel or think I think that’s the correct response even if it’s not what I intended.

Q: I hear you went out to rural Australia to get the album together. How did you find that change of space?

A: Oh yeah it was beautiful. It wasn’t that rural I guess. Just sort of a country town away from the city. It was great. I think it was just nice. I tried to really remove myself. The whole writing process I tried to bounce around and put myself in different environments, and use different tools to see how if affects your brain and how to break those patterns of working the same way.

I was in another state. I was away from my house, my friends. My phone had actually just broken, so I couldn’t really go and scroll through social media or whatever. Which was quite good, quite liberating for a writer. Not to be so distracted. I have a big response to the environment and my surroundings. It was really peaceful. To sit by this little lake, that had frogs making so much noise. It was kind of therapeutic.

Q: It feels like you can hear that sense of contentment on the album on the last track [Sunday Roast] particularly, it feels very peaceful and optimistic.

A: Oh yeah. Well actually I wrote the majority of the song when I was 13. But that last part I wrote recently.

Q: Is that something you do a lot, picking up tracks from when you were younger?

A: A lot of it was new-ish I guess. There were only a couple of bits that were really crossovers, that song. And ‘Help Yourself’. With that track, the drum and bass line I came up with when I was 15 or 16, and the main melody.

I mean I think that I always treat song writing like that. Songs travel along until they’re finished, I’m not too bothered about when they start or when they end. It’s just whatever works. All the lyrics are new. But the music still holds some sentiment. Nostalgia you know?

Q: Does that mean album three is already starting to bubble up?

A: Uh. Nah. There’s always songs that I’m working on over time. But I haven’t started thinking about anything else. I just keep on writing you know. I won’t get round to actually thinking properly for a little while.

Q: Did you have a view of what you wanted to do with the album. Was there a template you were working to, or something you knew you wanted to do going in?

A: No, not really. I wasn’t sure what I was doing. Or what I wanted to say or how I felt. I guess that was the first part of it. Figuring out how I was feeling and what I was thinking about. It became kind of obvious through rambling about the same kind of things.

Now that it’s released and there’s nothing you can really do about it. I’m released. But up until then I was pretty much tinkering about with it every day.

Q: Seeing Parquet Courts working with Danger Mouse, do you have any urge to do that superstar producer album?

A: Whatever works works. We tend to carry so much weight on that stuff and I mean, I think that if the relationships good and the musical understanding is good then it’s a great thing. But if you just want to hire a really big name and spend lots of money and hope that that’ll make a good thing, then that’s not good. But if all of the intention is good then sure. But yeah who knows.

Q: The other thing we wanted to talk about was your record label ‘Milk!’, talk us though the ethos and why it came together.

A: I started it just to put out my own music. And then started putting out friend’s records because we were doing shows together. And it was an easy way to put out music and promote shows and build it into something bigger. With more bands, more understanding and professionalism. It’s cool, it’s a real honour to be able to help great songwriters share their music. I just feel like there’s so much going on in the world of music and the internet, that it’s easy to become completely lost in that. It’s nice. We’ve built this really incredible community of people who love great music and are really open to experimenting and exploring.

Q: Do you have that tycoon streak, do you want to see it grow into a massive thing?

A: I’ve never wanted it to be like anything else. We’re lucky in the last year or so we’ve got a warehouse we can work from and a couple of friends working for us. But I’ve never had an intention of making it a kind of huge, you know, thing. I like how it is. I like the honesty and smallness of it.

Q: You seem to be playing bigger and bigger stages these days. How have you found it? It seems like the other end of that spectrum from Milk and the small, community feel.

A: Different sized festivals and shows all carry different energy and I guess different meanings and all that stuff. But it’s such a privilege to be able to do that. To play songs to people who are there to come and see you. At the end of the day, it’s singing songs on a stage.

Q: Thanks for chatting with us. A final thing, are there any bands coming up you think we should be keeping an eye on?

A: There are so many bands I love at the moment. All the Milk Records bands are great. We’ve got Loose Tooth on tour with us at the moment, they’re incredible. There’s a band called RVG from Melbourne. Totally Mild, Laura Jean, Sampa the Great. There’s just heaps of good stuff coming out of Australia.

Words by Rob Knaggs