Courtney Barnett’s landmark debut turns 10

“When Missy Higgins released The Sound of White, every young female artist wanted to be Missy. When Courtney Barnett released her album, everyone wanted to be Courtney.”

It was a remarkable rise for the Melbourne based artist. Before finding fame, Barnett had been working behind the bar at Melbourne’s Northcote Social Club, where she says she got to see a stack of incredible gigs for free. “And all I had to do was serve a couple of beers and clean up some spew every now and then.”

Barnett even named her first EP after the venue’s bar manager: I’ve Got a Friend Called Emily Ferris.

Before focusing on her solo career, Barnett was a member of Melbourne band Immigrant Union, alongside Brent DeBoer from The Dandy Warhols. In 2011, she was part of the band backing Russell Morris and Vanessa Amorosi when they covered Tom Petty’s I Won’t Back Down for Gerry Ryan’s GreenEDGE cycling team. The song was produced by music legend Ian “Molly” Meldrum, and you can see Barnett playing slide guitar in this clip.

When Barnett released Sometimes I Sit and Think, And Sometimes I Just Sit, the world fell in love with her distinctive, descriptive songwriting and deadpan delivery.

Noted English critic Everett True – who introduced Kurt Cobain to Courtney Love – wrote: “It’s been a while since western rock music, let alone Melbourne’s fiercely insular and often too-precious indie scene, has thrown up a songwriter and lyricist as intriguing, compelling, and down-to-earth, yet surreal and morbidly funny.”

Barnett performed Dead Fox on Conan O’Brien’s show.

She did Depreston on Jimmy Fallon’s Tonight Show.

And she appeared on Saturday Night Live.

Not that Courtney necessarily agreed with all the plaudits. In Pedestrian at Best, she sang: “Put me on a pedestal and I’ll only disappoint you.”

Sometimes I Sit and Think, And Sometimes I Just Sit was a hit all around the world, reaching number four on the Australian charts, 16 in the UK, and 20 in the US.

Barnett was nominated for ‘Best New Artist’ at the Grammy Awards (the trophy went to Meghan Trainor) and ‘Best International Female Solo Artist’ at the Brit Awards (Björk took the title).

Sometimes I Sit and Think, And Sometimes I Just Sit won the Australian Music Prize for album of the year. And Barnett won four ARIA Awards in 2015 – ‘Best Female Artist’, ‘Breakthrough Artist’, ‘Best Independent Release’, and ‘Best Cover Art’.

STACK reviewed Sometimes I Sit and Think, And Sometimes I Just Sit in our March 2015 issue, giving the record four stars. This was our first take on the album:

“How did she get here? ‘I am just a reflection of what you really wanna see,’ Courtney Barnett sings on her eagerly awaited debut album, ‘so take what you want from me.’

“Barnett reminds of artists that were ruling the indie world when she was in kindergarten – Liz Phair, Spiderbait, and another Courtney named Love. She’s ironic and detached (‘I must express my disinterest’) and popular.

“Like Tim Rogers, Barnett manages to find magnificence in the mundane, with vibrant vignettes and sharp suburban observations. And her rambling rhymes show she’s got a Chris Difford-like eye for detail.

“For the most part, it’s not overly deep (‘I was getting dizzy, my hair was wet and frizzy,’ she confesses in Aqua Profunda!), and in the slow-burning centrepiece, Small Poppies, she admits, ‘I don’t quite know who I am… I’ll make mistakes until I get it right.’

“And she concludes, ‘I’ve got no idea how I even got here.’ But there’s no point wondering why; instead, we should celebrate a gifted artist who’s managed to get the world’s attention. And as she declares in Debbie Downer, ‘I’m not finished yet.’”