Courtney Barnett faced a challenge after her explosion into the mainstream a few years ago. Her winning formula of scattergun ramblings and comical anecdotes, laid like an unmade duvet over a bed of fast-paced alternative rock, seemed unlikely to sustain its captivating energy over another album.
On Tell Me How You Really Feel, her sophomore solo album, Barnett has found a way to retain the intelligence of her songwriting, while finding ways to innovate and explore new areas of her psyche. There's a noticeable lack of a clean-cut hit in the vein of Elevator Operator or Depreston from her debut Sometimes I Sit and Think, but there's many a meaty song to fall in love with, and I suspect many a listener will see themselves in Barnett's excavations of her most inner anxieties.
Anxiety is a theme that permeates much of the record in both subtle and obvious ways – most prominently, of course, with the playful Crippling Self Doubt and a General Lack of Self-Confidence, on which Barnett recognises her tendency to put others on a pedestal: "I never feel as stupid as when I'm around you". Overall, it's a much blacker record than her debut, starting right off with Hopefulessness, which rolls out of its own murky depths and morphs into a full-noise rock snarl.
Barnett has always done darkness beautifully, but she retains some measured optimism on the record, such as on City Looks Pretty, which could reference her writer's block: "Wakin' up to another dismal day/You got a ways to go, you oughta be grateful". Nameless, Faceless, her most political song yet, puts an internet troll in his place: "He said, "I could eat a bowl of alphabet soup/And spit out better words than you/But you didn't."
It's less accessible and more insular than her previous work, but Barnett isn't running away from her fans. Instead, she's pushing herself more than ever before. As the extreme close-up of the cover indicates, Barnett is asking us to look her in the eye, and really hold her gaze on an album containing her most personal music yet.
Artist: Courtney Barnett
Album: Tell Me How You Really Feel
Label: Milk! Records
Verdict: A dark, insular record that elevates Barnett's songwriting
