It was quite the gut punch when Courtney Barnett had to cut short her American tour earlier this year due to Covid-19, losing numerous dates on the east coast including her stop at New Haven’s College St. Music Hall. Thankfully, the Australian singer and guitarist is evidently no worse for wear, returning several months later to play a string of shows pivoting around the storied Newport Folk Fest – where she shared a bill with acts such as The National, Lucy Dacus, and Joni Mitchell.
A rescheduled New Haven date is part of this US jaunt, and for many in the region who couldn’t make it to the island festival, this is the first time they’ll get to hear Barnett play songs from her late-2021 release, Things Take Time, Take Time. Barnett’s pandemic-era album, it’s a very different tone she strikes here compared to her previous two albums and double-EP. While she’s always deftly navigated a spectrum from mostly-restrained indie rock to fiery, grungy rippers, Things Take Time… is easily her most carefully-composed album to date, emblematic of a time when the world stood all but perfectly still.
While the pandemic was thankfully curtailed quite effectively in Australia, there was ample time in lockdown and no travel in or out of the country, and for Barnett, it yielded an album marked heavily by observations inward and outward. ‘Rae Street’ puts this encapsulated point of view on full display, both as the opener of the album and of the set for this tour. It’s fundamentally a people-watching song, from a time when people-watching was all there really was to do. Barnett is weary of the cycle of the days, but even still little cracks appear through which hope flows: the small victory of changing one’s neglected sheets; the final line encouraging a friend, the listener, or perhaps Barnett herself, to find direction even in the listlessness. The things she wishes for across this album are simple, core concepts: “Let’s get back to normal,” she hopes in ‘Rae Street’, and ‘If I Don’t Hear From You Tonight’ is a love song hinging on how the simple act of seeing someone amid curfews seems impossible, so you wait anxiously to hear a notification beep on a phone or computer that has become your only means of connection, trying to build a relationship with the smallest, most uncertain of building blocks.
The relaxed tone of this new record – where some songs even coast along on a drum machine, a rare or perhaps even unprecedented presence in her work – reminds one a bit at first blush of her work with the notably-chill Kurt Vile. Barnett and Vile collaborated in 2017 on an album called Lotta Sea Lice, a track from which (‘On Script’) makes its way into her setlist. It should come as no surprise then that she headed into the studio for Things Take Time… with Stella Mozgawa – the Warpaint drummer who produced both Lotta Sea Lice as well as the last decade’s worth of Vile albums, including his breakout success Wakin’ on a Pretty Daze.
That said, Barnett has quite the tendency for expanding the sound of even her quieter songs when played live, and this continues here. Though just a three-piece with bassist Bones Sloane and drummer Dave Mudie, their trio is preternaturally powerful, and the lengthy guitar solo that ends ‘Turning Green’ takes on quite a bit of heft as Barnett walks to each end of the stage during the song’s gorgeous comedown. That song is also accentuated early on by her playing of a cowbell, and the lamps that line the back of the stage – festooned like a living room with a sizable area rug – light up in time with her tapping on the metal implement.
Naturally though, the night isn’t just a showcase for Barnett’s latest record, it’s also full of highlights from her past releases, such as the singalong-prompting ‘Depreston’ and the psych-inspired shredding of ‘Small Poppies’, both from her debut LP, Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit. The release that introduced the wider world to Barnett, Sometimes… was instantly notable for her lyricism, which was and has remained compelling at any and every decibel level. From the verbose rock of ‘Pedestrian at Best’, an evergreen favorite among the crowd – Scorpios in particular – to the lackadaisical “dolewave” vibes of ‘An Illustration of Loneliness’, Barnett has a knack for wrenching something special even from the simple act of staring at the ceiling. An interesting parallel exists between the latter song and ‘If I Don’t Hear From You Tonight’, both finding Barnett more interested in the headspace of someone else than her own – albeit for very different reasons.
The main set closes as it began, with a track from Things Take Time…: ‘Write a List of Things To Look Forward To’ can be seen as the album’s thesis, its mission statement, a corollary to the title of the record itself. While on the album it has more of an electric-folk twang, played live it hits more like ‘Dancing in the Dark’. The song’s lyrics span the entire range of human experience, from the cycles of life and death to the sending of little snail-mail letters, each equally a part of the puzzling ebb and flow of existence.
The encore consists of two of the album’s most personal songs, ‘Splendour’ and ‘Before You Gotta Go’. The former takes place in the very moment when Barnett realizes that she and a partner are at an impasse, the only commonality in their perceptions is the fact that one is pulling away from each other. Its two-minute runtime contains such a specific, immediately-recognizable recounting of heartbreak. And though they’re not sequenced this way on the album, the positioning of these two songs in the set suggests a tie between them, with ‘Before You Gotta Go’ ending things on a more reconciliatory note, trying to abandon stubborn pride in favor of kindness. As her voice provides its own bouncy echo on the rhyme in the hook, it’s a tender reminder that one of Barnett’s greatest strengths is putting into words these ambiguous, frictive states that can characterize relationships; the in-betweens of longing, love, and loss – not necessarily in that order.
Luckily for those of us in the northeastern US, Barnett will be back in this region quite soon: she’s personally curating an installment of her Here & There festival in mid-August at Mass MoCA, an expansive museum tucked away in the Berkshires. She’ll be joined by an exemplary lineup including the aforementioned Lucy Dacus, Bartees Strange, and her Kiwi neighbors The Beths from across the Tasman Sea; breathing life into the tradition of the touring festival with a roster of bands liable to make the event minute-for-minute one of the best days of music in recent memory.
Review and photos by Collin Heroux
