Eight years ago, I was sitting in the Sydney Opera House Concert Hall watching Courtney Barnett do what Courtney Barnett does best: turn the mundane details of everyday life into extraordinary songs. Tonight, the Melbourne indie-rock favourite is back on that same stage, and there’s plenty to catch up on.
It’s a homecoming of sorts for the Grammy-nominated songwriter, who now calls Los Angeles home. Her return comes four years after her last Australian tour and follows an extensive run of shows across the UK and North America.
Onstage, Barnett is joined by longtime bassist Andrew ‘Bones’ Sloane, who has been part of her live band since 2013, and Stella Mozgawa, the formidable drummer best known for her work with Warpaint. Mozgawa’s inventive percussion and Sloane’s rock-solid bass provide the muscle behind Barnett’s guitar work, giving the trio plenty of room to move between quieter moments and full-throttle indie rock.
Tonight at the Opera House, Barnett’s appeal remains as compelling as ever. The familiar deadpan delivery, the deceptively casual guitar playing and the knack for slipping devastating observations into songs that initially sound almost conversational.
But there’s a new chapter to explore. Released in March, Creature of Habit finds Barnett navigating some significant upheavals. A move from Australia to Los Angeles, the closure of her long-running Milk! Records label and questions about the future of her career have all fed into an album concerned with change, uncertainty and the difficulty of getting out of your own way.
Recorded between the wide-open landscapes of Joshua Tree and her home studio, the record expands Barnett’s musical palette while retaining the sharp observational songwriting that first made her impossible to ignore.
Singles Stay in Your Lane and Site Unseen, the latter featuring Waxahatchee, reveal a songwriter confronting change head-on, with a renewed sense of purpose running through the material.
Of course, Barnett’s reputation was established long before this latest chapter.
Her 2014 breakthrough Avant Gardener introduced the world to an artist capable of making an asthma attack sound like a brilliantly observed short story. The Grammy-nominated Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit followed in 2015, delivering Pedestrian at Best and Depreston, songs that helped establish Barnett as one of Australia’s most distinctive musical exports.
Then came Lotta Sea Lice, her 2017 collaboration with Kurt Vile, followed by Tell Me How You Feel in 2018 and the more introspective Things Take Time, Take Time in 2021.
What makes Barnett such a compelling live performer is the contrast between the apparent simplicity of her songs and the sheer force of her guitar playing. One moment there’s a quietly devastating observation about modern life; the next, the guitars are cutting loose with a ferocity that catches you off guard.
The Opera House Concert Hall provides a magnificent setting for that dynamic. It’s a room that rewards the smallest musical details but can also accommodate the full force of Barnett’s indie-rock instincts.
Eight years after that last Opera House appearance, Barnett is older, geographically further from home and working through a new set of questions. But the qualities that made her such an extraordinary songwriter remain intact.
Courtney Barnett is back at the Sydney Opera House, and there’s still nobody quite like her.
Barnett plays the Palais Theatre in Melbourne tomorrow, tickets HERE.
Images Deb Pelser
