Melbourne, AU · indie-rock · slacker-rock

Courtney Barnett

3 upcoming festivals ↓

Deadpan Melbourne songwriting full of tiny observed details, over guitar that gets a lot noisier live — slacker delivery hiding a genuinely ferocious player.

Courtney Barnett was born in Sydney in 1987, given the middle name Melba after the opera singer Nellie Melba; her mother was a ballerina. She grew up in Sydney's Northern Beaches before her family moved to Hobart when she was sixteen. Listening to Darren Hanlon and Dan Kelly pushed her toward songwriting while she studied at the Tasmanian School of Art and worked as a pizza delivery driver.

Before her solo career, Barnett played second guitar in Melbourne grunge band Rapid Transit and later fronted Courtney Barnett and the Olivettes. She also spent time in the psych-country group Immigrant Union, playing slide guitar, and contributed lead guitar to Jen Cloher's album In Blood Memory. Her own label, Milk! Records, put out her first EP, I've Got a Friend Called Emily Ferris, in 2012.

She first drew wide attention with the EP compilation The Double EP: A Sea of Split Peas, and her debut album Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit brought international recognition, earning four wins from eight nominations at the ARIA Awards and nominations for a Grammy and a Brit Award. Her writing is conversational and detailed, often built from ordinary incidents and delivered in a flat, wry speaking-singing style.

Barnett also runs the label Milk! Records and recorded the collaborative album Lotta Sea Lice with Kurt Vile in 2017. Live, her guitar playing is considerably rougher and louder than the records suggest. She has since released Tell Me How You Really Feel, Things Take Time, Take Time and Creature of Habit.

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