Australian indie icon Courtney Barnett has just announced the release of her third studio album ‘Things Take Time, Take Time’ on 12 November 2021 through Marathon Artists and released the first single, ‘Rae Street’.
‘Rae Street’ is a gentle, reflective track with Barnett’s signature wry observations on the vicissitudes of life: immediate real and acute observations rendered in a voice dripping with melancholy and a self-deprecating sense of humour. Barnett sings time is money; and money is no man’s friend as she captures vignettes of life from her apartment. The track reflects the travails of lockdown Melbourne – or indeed anywhere – where time takes on a whole different dimension and the world passes by as if on a widescreen – distant objects that move separately from your tiny world, alien and transfixing:
In the morning I’m slow. I drag a chair over to the window. And I watch what’s going on. A garbage truck tiptoes along the road. Light a candle for the suffering. Send my best wishes with the wind. All our candles, hopes n prayers, though well-meaning they don’t mean a thing, unless we see some change. I might change my sheets today.
Barnett is truly the uncrowned poet laureate of Australia: casting her own internal world of wonder and magic in a projection across the nation. The accompanying video is suitably enchanting: a wide eyed naivety and sense of wonder that Barnett always conveys as if she is seeing things for the first time in absolute awe:
The seeping melancholy holds, despite itself, a sense of optimism and joy at the beauty in mundanity.
‘Things Take Time, Take Time’ was written over two years and recorded towards the end of 2020 and early 2021 in Sydney, Northern NSW and Melbourne with musical kindrid-spirit producer/drummer Stella Mozgawa (Warpaint, Cate le Bon, Kurt Vile).
‘Rae Street’ is available to stream and download here and you can pre-order the album here.
Feature Photograph: Mia Mala McDonald
