Courtney Barnett, Electric Ballroom

After a first trip to the UK early last year, Courtney Barnett is back, touring in the Spring in support of her second full-length release, slated to arrive on March 23^rd.
Following a glowing reception across Australia for her 2012 debut EP I've Got A Friend Called Emily Ferris and subsequent global acclaim for her compilation, 'double EP' A Sea of Split Peas, led by the charming, rambling and excellently-titled Avant Gardener, Barnett's star has continued to rise as she and her band (The Courtney Barnetts) revive a jangly, witty story-telling style that brings to mind The Moldy Peaches and leaves her being labelled 'slacker rock' by every journalist who sees her show.
It's not an unfair label, but perhaps a bit of a lazy one. Her languid, stream-of-consciousness lyrics tumble over lo-fi garage-rock guitar, but the songs are always smart, and develop in unexpected ways. When she's not recounting dreams or worrying about the 9 to 5, she's describing how an afternoon gardening left her in the back of an ambulance or how she thought her hair had turned to straw. She's smarter than your average garage band, and comes across at all times as endearingly down-to-earth, even in her penchant for tongue-twisting album names - this year's Sometimes I Sit and Think and Sometimes I Just Sit follows on the back of 2013's How To Carve A Carrot Into A Rose.
Aside from the her own music, Barnett has drawn together around her a talented roster of Australia's best songwriters and musicians to form Milk! Records, which runs out of her front room and bypasses the industry suits who you get the impression would only rub her up the wrong way. It's hard not to admire the simple vision of a girl who describes her label like this: "you’ve got the internet, and music – you put them together and people hear your music."