Saturday, May 23, 2015

New Music 2015 - Part 41 - Courtney Barnett - Sometimes I Sit and Think...

The title 'Sometimes I Sit and Think, Sometimes I Just Sit.' refers, of course, to the great divider that the Eurovision Song Contest has become as it celebrates its 60th!
The archetypal dysfunctional 'family' is joined by Australia this year and I for one welcome that wholeheartedly. I can't imagine how anything but good can come of it. Think what the headlines would be if Guy Sebastian were to win with 'Tonight Again'?

Australia is "not allowed" to host the competition so where would it be held? I'd nominate Ireland, to be quite honest and not just because there is no danger of them winning it themselves in 2015 as they failed to make the final.

The foregoing is an unlikely scenario and whatever happens when Eurovision 2015 is gone and forgotten this next Australian, starting to take the UK by storm with an album that is as difficult to describe as it is clever and that extends to its duplicitous title - 'Sometimes I Sit and Think, Sometimes I Just Sit.' - is extremely unlikely to suffer the same fâte.
What is more, her take on events chimes rather nicely with the way many of us in the UK view Eurovision and many other things.

There is a constituency that she is just born to inherit - those that like deliberately obtuse songs full of internal questioning and clever wordiness. I could listen to this LP over and over again and not get bored but, equally, I just know that it will have rabid haters for exactly the same reasons that make me a fan. It is like Marmite or more appropriately, and it appears in the lyric to one song, the antipodean equivalent Vegemite. Be that as it may I'm happy as she is playing Green Man Festival 2015. It has some references that I could mention, at least for me, but I don't think that I need to mention them. 
Astonishingly this is Courtney Barnett's début album but I recommend that you also listen to 'A Sea of Split Peas' (2013), which is a compilation of songs from her EPs.

No comments: