"You're nice!" hollers an innebriated fan from the front rows. "No, you're nice," Courtney Barnett bounces back, "no, you hang up..."
There's a mutual love-in at Courtney Barnett gigs these days. With cross-crowd banter and her constantly stumbling from the drum riser to square up to the audience, it feels more like she's playing in our garage than the same stage that the likes of Prince set alight last year. But there's more than a little chit-chat and high-jinx at work that makes Barnett so personable and familiar.
"I've had women interviewing me where they're like 'so, what's your style?' And I'm like 'are you fucking kidding? Can we talk about my music?'" Barnett told Gigwise. "It's this whole sexist bullshit thing. They're like 'oh, here's the female Kurt Cobain because I'm wearing a t-shirt and jeans'. I think lots of people wear t-shirt and jeans. It's just funny, the way people like to make a comparison because it's easy and new things are scary. People want to feel safe."
While she may be heralded as the voice of the new slacker generation and somewhat of an 'anti-rockstar', the female Cobain she is not. There's nothing contrived, no PR storm at work, she's just herself, and you can't ask for anything more.
Her comfort in her own skin seeps through her self-deprecating wit-tickling lyrics and flows through her performance of sheer abandon. Opening with the pop-grunge of the playful voyeurism of a man's day gone awry 'Elevator Operator' into the rolling drawl of 'An Illustration Of Loneliness' and the summer breeze of certain future single 'Dead Fox', there's a bristling energy, curiosity and humour that finds the extraordinary in the everyday.
The greatest responses are saved for the twisted charisma of the searing 'Avant Gardner', hangove anthem 'History Eraser' and first set closer of the sharp-edged 'Pedestrian At Best', but the truth is that it's a night of consistent flow.
As the crowd scream and bellow for more, she doesn't play up to the adoration, instead following her band introductions she announces herself as 'Dave Bones the...fucker'. "This feels like our second home," she humbly smiles, "I really didn't wanna say that". Home is wherever you belong, and Courtney Barnett can make that feel like pretty much anywhere.
