Courtney Barnett is enjoying the sort of period most young artists dream of. After a couple of low-key EPs, the 25-year-old’s debut album, Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit, is receiving rave reviews, and she is selling out shows. Her music is a mix of the Velvet Underground, blues, folk and slacker-grunge. Some of her breezy pop hooks are naggingly familiar.
However, Barnett’s considerable talent lies in her vocal delivery, which makes her come across like a fusion of All I Wanna Do-era Sheryl Crow and Alex Turner of Arctic Monkeys. Barnett sings of everyday, even mundane subjects – organic vegetables, an asthma attack, an encounter in the local pool – with astonishing, self-deprecating and rapid-fire wordplay.
Barely taking a breath, she sings: “I’ve got no idea how I ever got here / I’m resentful I’m having an existential time crisis / What bliss, daylight savings won’t fix this mess / Underworked and oversexed I must express my disinterest / The rats are back inside my head what would Freud have said?” Trying to sing along could put you in hospital.
At tonight’s show, people don’t sing; they just gaze in humbled reverence. Makeup free and wearing a shapeless top, the Australian singer makes a refreshing alternative to today’s highly sexualised, overstyled pop stars. She is excited but ever so slightly awkward. Her unruly hair sent flying, she could be a teenager in front of a mirror playing air guitar with a tennis-racket: her untamed, showbiz-free exuberance is tremendously endearing.
“Hi. I should have said ‘hello’ at the start,” she says eventually. The gig is like her career: it starts well and just keeps getting better. Elevator Operator shows her mastery at conjuring up characters: “Oliver Paul, 20 years old / Thick head of hair, worries he’s going bald.” Conversely, Depreston, Barnett’s ethereally beautiful tale of house-hunting in rundown Melbourne, would make Lucinda Williams proud.
Outstanding closer Pedestrian at Best could be by a female-fronted Nirvana, if they’d had lines as deadpan as: “Give me all your money and I’ll make some origami, honey.” Barnett has to be coaxed back for an encore, suggesting the spotlight has come as a surprise. “Put me on a pedestal and I’ll only disappoint you,” she sings. Plenty of people would beg to disagree.
• At Newcastle University, 31 March. Box office: 0191-239 3900. Then touring.
