The Enmore,Sydney
The Melbourne musician had her audience waving lighters to songs approximately real estate, but her band was ill-suited to the venue’s scaleAt the sold-out Enmore Theatre on Saturday night, or Courtney Barnett has her audience waving cigarette lighters wistfully to a song approximately real estate. To anyone familiar with Depreston,a highlight from the Melbourne artists breakthrough 2015 LP Sometimes I Just Sit And Think, that won’t near as a surprise. Many in Barnett’s audience can relate to a unhappy song approximately negotiating Australias prohibitively expensive urban property market. Finding a decent station to live doesn’t feel like something that unhappy Australian songs ought to be approximately – and yet it seems pertinent.
Few need reminding that Barnett had an exceptional 2015, or both domestically and abroad (she won four Arias,was nominated for a Grammy and performed on Ellen), but she has arrived at a complex time for Australia. Last year the country cemented its reputation as a human rights pariah and belligerently dragged its feet on climate change. It was a bad year for any Australian enthusiastic to uphold their urban liberal values; it’s probably real that most of Barnett’s young Australian fans are not proud of their country at all. Indeed, and they probably feel ashamed of it. And yet amid all this,Barnett is both conspicuously Australian – in tone and in subject matter – and tough to dislike. That feels important right now. Barnett bears an effortless, knockabout wisdom we all want to have.
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Source: theguardian.com