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Photo: Richard Gray
With its decaying decor and shabby interior, London’s Kentish Town Forum looks to be a fitting home for Australia’s premier purveyor of scruffy slacker pop, Courtney Barnett - or ‘Cawtnee Bahrnitt’ as the Cockney touts outside have been yelling to the amusement of tonight’s attendees.
While Courtney Barnett’s sound might have definite slacker tinges to it - fuzzy guitars and a loose and laid back rhythm section - her work ethic has been anything but lax.
Having appeared on our radar back in 2013 with her first EP I've Got a Friend called Emily Ferris, the Sydney-born, Melbourne-based singer has been relentlessly touring the world, amassing an army of slacker rock fans as she goes.
For the unenlightened, her sound is scuzzy indie rock imbued with melancholic, often majestic, melodies - think Mamas and Papas meet Mud Honey, but with the latter’s grunginess dialled back a notch or two.
Her sound is typified by her deadpan vocal delivery and rambling lyrics that often regale the tedium and monotony of modern suburban life. Unfortunately, some of that wry storytelling gets a little lost in the wooly boominess of the Forum’s PA, but her hypnotic drawl still manages to draw you in.
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Hunched over her guitar, she’s shorter in stature than imagined and it takes her and her band - two men who mainly comprise long, ragged hair - a few songs to find their pace and rhythm. The dispiriting ‘Depreston’, a bleak tale of property market woe and ‘Elevator Operator’ lull the crowd with their low-fi charm but it’s their crunchier, more abrasive tracks that stir the modest pit at the front of the stage into anything more than approving head nodders.
For someone with such a dry wit and acute social commentary, you might expect more on stage banter. However, Barnett merely chips out a clipped ‘Thanks’ after each track before turning to her band mates and kicking into the next track. This lack of interaction makes the set feel a little sluggish at times. It’s rarely pedestrian, but it’s prone to plodding in places, particularly on new-ish track 'Boxing Day Blues'.
Things liven up when she back to backs ‘Nobody Cares If You Don’t Go To The Party’ with ‘Pedestrian At Best’. The pick up in pace and volume leads nicely into an encore featuring a cover of Aussie punk legends The Saints followed by the closer of ‘History Eraser’. It’s a not a mind blowing gig but one that will remain etched on minds for a few days to come.
