Milk! Records - Notes from Pig City

Courtney Barnett: Taking her time

At the beginning of 2020, while her home country burned and the rest of the world was waking up to a global pandemic, Courtney Barnett was in Los Angeles. She’d just completed an American tour; her plan was to find herself an apartment and stick around a little longer to work on songs.

Then – after “it all got really wild” – she came home to Melbourne. For maybe the first time in six years – since her 2016 hit Avant Gardener turned her into the newest “New Dylan” – Barnett finally had time to sit and think. “There was a bit of a personal shift of some sort in my brain,” she says carefully over Zoom, from a Spartan-looking room that offers no clues. “I felt myself opening up in a different way.”

Barnett’s personal life had been riven with upheaval, even beyond the virus that wreaked havoc on her industry. Her relationship with Jen Cloher, with whom she founded her label Milk! Records in 2012, had ended in 2018 (the business partnership remains intact). There had also been “some deaths” – she doesn’t say whom. “I was just checking in with myself, on a different level than I maybe had done previously.”… Read more..

Love’s shadow

Music / August 2, 2017 / 8 minutes of reading

A piece of paper stuck to the entrance of the Coburg RSL in Melbourne reads “cash only (dark ages)”. It’s not much warmer inside than the freezing July night outside. A lonely few returned servicemen and their wives prop up the bar. At the far end of the hall is a makeshift stage, instruments and amplifiers waiting for a crowd that would never normally be here. Images of soldiers watch like sentries overhead.

The first person I see is Melbourne singer and songwriter Jen Cloher, one of the main reasons a large crowd will soon pour through the doors. The other is her partner and lead guitarist in her band, Courtney Barnett. Cloher is stirring two large vats of pumpkin and black bean soup for the soon-to-be huddled masses. “Gotta serve something to warm up the troops,” she says cheerfully.

She’s on first. Her bass player Bones Sloane, who also plays with Barnett, plays the opening notes of a new song, Regional Echo. “We’ve got a new album coming out,” Cloher says when it’s over, to polite whoops from the crowd. “We’ve got a launch coming up in a couple of months and all that jazz.”

“August,” Barnett says.

“September 8 at the Howler [in Brunswick],” Cloher corrects her sternly.… Read more..

Love’s shadow Read More »