BeatRoute Magazine B.C. print e-edition - April 2016

MUSIC
COURTNEY BARNETT
no time for sitting around
Courtney Barnett is one of the most clever and witty lyricists around today.
It’s morning in Melbourne when Courtney
Barnett calls me. She’s sitting in her car,
wrapped in a blanket parked in her driveway.
It’s raining, cold, and miserable outside. Her
house has bad cellphone reception and it’s
too frigid to sit on the lawn. Unpleasant
circumstances aside, she’s still laughing. This
situation could easily be the premise for one
of her songs, because for Barnett, tragedy
breeds comedy and the specifics of everyday
mundanity are spun into relatable tales
of heartbreak and triumph in the face of
confusion.
The Australian songwriter’s journey with
music started as a kid living in the suburbs
of Sydney. With a cool older brother and
a neighbour willing to trade mixtapes as
guiding lights, Barnett started learning guitar
and writing music at an early age. At 18 she
started performing her solo work, and though
she dabbled in collaborating with bands for
a while, she maintains throughout she was
always doing her own thing. In line with this
independent thinking was Barnett’s move to
start her own label, Milk! Records, to facilitate
the release of her first EP. Now a full fledged
direct artist-to-listener operation, in the
beginning Milk! Records was nothing more
than a ploy to be heard.
“It was pretty basic. I didn’t really have much
money so I just set up a website and released
my first EP on CD and digital. Not many people
were buying them because not many people
knew who I was, but it was kind of word of
mouth and it spread a bit,” explains Barnett.
Barnett managed to cobble together the
means to get her music to other continents.
With the help of money raised from localized
touring, government arts grants, and labels
by Maya-Roisin Slater
in New York and London, she’s been touring
beyond Australia regularly since the release
of her double EP, A Sea of Split Peas. Her
songs, which centre around exposing personal
pitfalls, show that Barnett is a shy and anxious
women. For her, touring was a way of facing
her fears, like a kid being thrown into the pool
to swim for their life. “I grew in many ways, as
a musician, as a songwriter, as a person. I really
had to learn some life skills and social skills. I’m
very shy and not very good at socializing, but
stuff like that really pushed me to have to do it.
You have to meet people, you have to do press,
you have to mingle with the bands, the other
bands are sometimes really nice people. I try
to stay open to experiences, I guess you can’t
grow unless you push yourself in ways like that.
It’s fun, it’s great playing your music in front of
anyone, anyone who’ll listen, it’s amazing,” she
explains.
Back home after a long bout of touring
and summer festivals in support of her
debut album, Sometimes I Sit and Think and
Sometimes I Just Sit, released in 2015, Barnett
is slowly but surely getting started on her next
project.
“I’m trying to make a new album. I just get
distracted a lot,” she explains. Barnett hopes
to have it out by next year, that goal and many
others are sitting on a list for her horizon. “I’ve
always had a lot of things I want to learn how
to do,” she says. “You know, learn how to play
piano, learn how to speak French, it never
happens. But maybe that’ll get better in the
next year. I’ll learn how to be a better person,
all kinds of things.”
Courtney Barnett plays the Commodore
Ballroom April 19
BLEACHED
LA band has a passion for thrashin’
Earlier this year, Annie Clark (St.
Vincent) made headlines for
designing a female-friendly guitar.
If things go as planned, Bleached sister
duo Jessica and Jennifer Clavin may
be next in a movement of women
musicians revolutionizing the onstage
experience for female rockers. In their
case, the Clavin’s education in fashion
design would lend itself perfectly to a
line of clothing that is also, as Jessica
posits, “thrash-friendly.” It’s a no-brainer
for the group, rounded out by bassist
Micayla Grace and drummer Nick Pillot,
the sole male member. The band’s
female majority is unanimous on what
comes most naturally to each of them
individually: performing.
With its careening guitar melodies,
slightly unhinged momentum, and
subtle snarl, Welcome The Worms is
more conducive to thrashing than the
band’s 2011 debut album, Ride Your
Heart. Drug-references, tales of reckless
abandonment, and self-destruction are
abound on Bleached’s second LP, but
the album isn’t intended to glorify these
themes. Rather, it’s about “welcoming
the dark side of life” along with the light.
Speaking over the phone with Grace and
the Clavin sisters the day after wrapping
up their stint at SXSW and only hours
before a show in San Antonio, the
conversation steers towards juice and
spa sessions rather than the deadly
sugar-liquor combo of the new song
“Sour Candy.”
That Welcome The Worms was the
first time that the Clavin sisters involved
Grace in the writing process is a testament
to the trustworthiness of the band’s
newest permanent member. Jennifer is far
from oblivious to her possessiveness of
Bleached and is honest about the fact that
the aspect of making music she finds most
challenging is having her writing meddled
with in production. However, she is just as
forthcoming to say that the new approach
to writing, which was done collectively
as well as alone, allowed the individual
members to let out their different sides.
The outcome, says Grace, represents their
personal and collective growth. The hope
is that eventually the band will evolve to
encompass what Jessica calls a “whole
band concept,” akin to The Kinks and The
Beatles, with their drummer also on board
with the writing duties.
If Bleached can keep on their current
trajectory it seems a sure thing that
whatever form their next collaboration
takes on will have an exponentially
greater outcome.
Bleached perform at the Biltmore Cabaret
on April 28
Bleached are embracing the “whole band” concept on their new LP.
by Thalia Stopa
photo: Nichole Anne Robbins
6 APRIL 2016 •
Music