This year will soon be finished and as usual people are effortlessly making and publishing lists concerning the best music produced in 2015 whether in its variety of genres or within a particular genre.
We made the lists too. The one we are posting today concerns the BEST EP'S of 2015 according to our criteria and editorial policy. Every image shown below links to information about the choices we made, all you have to do is click over each one of them.
There is no hierarchy from top to bottom or order at all that leads to conclude that one of these 25 EP's is the best of them all. They are all equally very good and that's the reason why we've selected them to be part of this list.
Indievotion publishes today the second of a series of in depth interviews with musicians and/or bands that it deeply cherishes. This new interview is with Sarah Duni Bourland from the Long Beach based dark psych gaze, the highly talented trio Space Waves.
The interview was scheduled since the beginning of summer and we were really looking forward to doing it because we are pretty sure that the music world must break with the mainstream chain of mediocracy and get in touch with the fantastic work that so many bands are making most of them in a DIY regular basis.
Taking into account that we are working on an in depth article about Space Waves due to be published until the end of the year for now we’ll just state that Space Waves are atmospheric, trippy, rhythmic, raw and even mantric considering that many of their songs melodic backbone seems to work out just like a multi layered incantational texture.
One final and grateful word to Sarah Duni Bourland for her prompt and generous cooperation without which this amazing interview wouldn’t have been possible. Good reading!
1. Space Waves formed back in 2008. How did it happen and in which way your cultural and musical background contributed to joining a band?
S: I think Kelley and I each have a strong feeling that we were meant to meet each other. Looking back, it all seemed to happen rather quickly, and there were all these elements in place where we really helped each other. Like when we met I hadn't played music for a year and a half. I had been living in San Francisco and while I did have my bass with me, I loaned it to my housemate the whole time I was there. I wanted to focus more on writing during that time and I took some creative writing and poetry classes. Anyway, so I decided to move to Portland Oregon and that is how Kelley and I met, as housemates at first. But we spent a lot of time together and eventually it became obvious there was a connection there. So basically he got me back into playing music because he would play all the time in the house and he said I should play too. I loved his guitar playing--he had the upstairs attic room so it would float down from the ceiling, very atmospheric. He had a home studio set up there and good speakers and all that, and he would blast songs we liked and we would play along...so I think that whole period of playing together like that was important for us. He also encouraged me to sing—I had always been fairly shy about singing. We each have musical backgrounds since we were kids but I think what was lacking was a strong creative connection with other people, and we found that in each other and were able to help each other grow in that way. Eventually we started writing and recording original songs together, and after we had three of those we figured we could release an EP, so that is when Space Waves was consciously formed and named. I should also maybe mention that Kelley had been recording really awesome electronic music with these great synthesizers he had…the Intro song on our EP and the title track Receptions are examples of those. He has a lot more that is unreleased.
2. Is there any particular explanation for the name of the band or is merely a name with no further “metaphysical” explanation? S: Yes and no...like I mentioned above, we had three original songs recorded and wanted to put them out, so we needed a band name and an imprint name. I did a meditation where I tried to get as trance-like as I could and came up with the names "Mindwave" and "Space Waves." So we decided Space Waves for the band and Mindwave for the label. I actually like that the name isn't a direct reference to anything in particular. I did internet searches for bands with that name and couldn't find any. So we just went with it...I have different meanings associated with it that have accumulated over time. 3. You and Kelley are not full time musicians. What is it like to be so and how does it interfere with your creative process and rehearsal logistics? S: We basically try to do the best we can without stressing about it too much. We have a practice room in our house and a home studio setup for recording demos and those are important for us to have. I imagine if we didn’t have to worry about having other jobs, music would become more of a top priority and we’d be able to spend more time on it…there are some areas where I feel we are weaker than others, especially with promotion, videos, and touring. If we were full time we’d probably get things done faster and get more done. I know Kelley in particular would love to be a full time musician, but I have some reservations about it. It would be great to have more time and energy to spend on music though, for sure. In some ways I feel like instead of doing other normal life stuff, like having a kid or buying a house or car, we have our band instead!
4. How would you define Space Waves sound? What is your musical genre comfort zone if you think that there is one? S: I think we are basically a rock band with some psychedelic and pop influences. I hesitate to use the shoegaze term but we have gotten called that and I understand it and it is an influence. Dreampop or space rock might be categories we fall under too. If we had more time to experiment I think our sound would be slightly different…maybe just more instrumentation. I have just stuck with playing bass and singing for our last two albums, but lately I have been playing an acoustic guitar a lot and I’ve thought about adding that in, or playing my other instruments, but I think we also enjoy just keeping it simple and straightforward with guitar, bass, drums, and that’s it, at least live. 5. Which bands and/or musicians did influence you most and why? S: This is probably the most difficult question for me because there are so many it’s hard to pinpoint them and the ways they have been influential. I was very into the Beatles from a young age, and I remember liking the Beach Boys a lot when I was young (elementary school age). I was really into a lot of 60s bands as a teenager and wasn’t really into much new stuff, except for Beck. Kelley is into a lot of classic rock too like Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin. We both love the Cure. But really like I said there are a lot of other influences too, and our individual influences have become each other’s influences. I think my time in school bands had a big influence on me since that is where I learned to play and read music, even though with our band I do my best to shun the traditional aspects of music theory and convention. I guess I want it to be an expression of myself but the truth is just that I get songs in my head and then I get them out through the band, and that’s really about it. I’ve developed a strange way of thinking where I actually try NOT to write songs. So anything that makes its way out as a song really has to stick out in my mind. Kelley started piano lessons when he was four and started playing guitar at age 10 so at this point I think it’s second nature for him.
6. Space Waves did as far as we know cover versions from The Doors, Mazzy Star and Joy Division. Each cover with its own peculiarities but all equally very good and psyched. Is this something that you really like to do and play live? Are there any future covers on the making? S: Thanks! Well I always prefer playing our own songs and have reservations about covers. I guess I feel like no one else will play my songs so shouldn’t I be playing them? But covers can be fun. Kelley really wants to cover “Achilles Last Stand” by Led Zeppelin. We practiced that one a lot when we last lived in Oregon. With Brandon I think the only cover we have played is Slowdive by Slowdive but it’s been awhile since we have played it. 7. Space Waves spent a few years back and forth between Portland and Los Angeles. Apart from the inherent stress can we objectively say that Space Waves creative process is someway influenced by these two cities? S: Yeah, I’d say so, definitely. I mentioned above that I lived in San Francisco for a time and took some writing classes there, and I also took some when I lived in L.A. (before I met Kelley). I think growing a bit as a storyteller and writer influenced when I started writing lyrics. Our 2nd album “You Can Ride A Beam Of Light Like a Musical Strum” was recorded when we lived in the countryside in Oregon, which was mostly a strange and isolating experience. We started working on our third album ‘Sing My Song’ there and moved to Long Beach, California in the middle of that, which probably made it a bit more stressful. We were releasing our 2nd album, moving, changing jobs, and starting work on our 3rd album at the same time… so we probably didn’t handle all of that the best that we could have. Moving so much has definitely been challenging for us but things seem to be working out okay in Long Beach/Los Angeles now. I was born and raised here and Kelley was born and raised in Oregon so that is partly why we have moved around so much and I’m sure those places have influenced us in many ways.
8. Space Waves had three different drummers in eight years. Was this only due to geography and logistics or it had to do with the need to redefining the sound of the band and working process? S: Mostly just geography and logistics, yeah. We’ve actually had more than three drummers, but we have only released albums with three. Carlo played on a couple songs on our first album Receptions, when we lived in Echo Park (Los Angeles) and then when we moved to Oregon we recorded the next two with Mark Loftin, who lived in San Francisco. This was when we lived in Oregon but it was also during the beginning part of our time in Long Beach. It was interesting having a long distance drummer and we were able to do some touring with Mark. Now we have been playing with Brandon for about two years and he lives here so we are more of a regular local band. We are super glad it’s been working out with Brandon. I knew him from high school and I saw him at the grocery store after we moved to Long Beach and said hi, and when I put a call out online that we were looking for a drummer he was the first and only person to respond. I was hoping he’d be interested but I wasn’t sure. And now we’ve written and recorded an entire album and have played almost 20 shows so that’s been great! 9. How would you describe Space Waves songwriting and composing process as well as the main substract of your lyrics? Do they come to mind naturally or do you revise them over a period of time before it is ready to studio? S: They tend to come to mind naturally for me. I am grateful for all of the songs I have written and it’s not something I try to be overly self-aware of or pushy about. I am thrilled that I have even written any songs at all and if I never come up with any more I’d be fine with that! But right now I have at least 4 more for when we’re ready to start working on new ones. I have ideas for several more than that but those 4 have lyrics and they are basically all structured out. It’s always exciting for me to bring a new song to the band and to hear it be fleshed out in the full sound. Lately I tend to do my initial writing and practicing on an acoustic guitar and I usually will have practiced it quite a bit before I show it to Kelley, and we usually will practice it together before showing it to Brandon, just to streamline the process the best we can. But we will also work on songs all together as well. It just depends on the song. I use the bass for writing too or sometimes I will just hear a lyric melody in my head first. For my lyrics I tend to use more of a stream of consciousness approach. One of my new songs, which I think will be called Blue Hell, was partially influenced by the Dark Tower series by Stephen King. But I usually am just singing about my own experiences or dreams. I tend not to spend too much time revising as I don’t want to take away from my initial expression. I tend to doubt myself so even if I look back at some lyrics and am not too sure about them, I just think, well that’s how I was feeling at the time so I want to honor that, and if I start revising then I will never be finished. Also usually whoever is the main singer on a sing is also the main writer of that song, but we each come up with our own parts. I could be wrong but I think Kelley’s writing usually starts with guitar.
10. You’re about to finish the mixing process of your 4 th LP. Can you tell us about how it went? S: Kelley has been really keen on the older recording methods, using tape reels and all that, and we have incorporated tape into our 2nd and 3rd albums, but for this one we went full blown analog. So that was interesting. It seems to me to be a dying art in a way. I don’t think it’s really taught much in schools so it seems like you have to have real-world experience with it. We worked with Larry Crane (of Tape Op Magazine and Jackpot! Recording Studio in Portland) again who knows how to work with tape but rarely gets to do full albums on tape anymore. We recorded onto 2” tape and mixed down to 1/4” tape and mastered from that. For the vinyl the company we use will make the lacquer straight from the tape so it will truly be all analog. We recorded drums, bass and guitar all together and overdubbed vocals and Kelley overdubbed extra guitar and synths, organ or piano on the songs that had extra instrumentation. It’s a lot of work, a lot of planning, but also a lot of fun. We try to be as efficient as we can in the studio since we can’t afford to dilly dally. We all thought that the basic (or raw as I like to call them) tracks sounded better than anything we’ve recorded before. I am not very technically minded and I don’t even pretend to know much about recording, so I can’t get too detailed with this. We love working with Larry though and hope to do so again in the future, and now we have plenty of tape we can re-use for future recordings. As I type this we are waiting on getting the final masters. I think partly why I have such weird mental filters around writing songs is just the sheer amount of work that goes into getting them recorded. They really have to mean something for me to go to all this trouble—even if it’s kind of fun trouble.
11. When in comparison with previous LP’s and particularly with the fabulous Sing my Song what can we expect from the new album sonic palette? S: It is similar to Sing My Song, but I think it is a little bit heavier on the rock side. We have one or two quieter songs. It’s our first album with Brandon drumming so there may be some notable differences there. Like on Sing My Song there are some synths/organ/piano done by Kelley on a few songs, and some cool guitar work. He played his customized J. Mascis Jazzmasters (Fender and Squier) and he got to use some really awesome guitars for overdubs on some of the songs; a 1953 Les Paul Goldtop, a 1956 Fender Telecaster and a Guild semi-hollowbody from the 70s that he used for feedback. A great studio moment was his overdub on “Aaron’s Song” where he got this blistering sound at the end. And Larry did some really cool things too, like with the tube tape echo. Hopefully all in all it is a good balance of all our different aspects. I think it has a bit more dynamic range than our other albums, good rhythms and riffs and hopefully it will reach some people who will dig it…and if not, at least we had fun making it. I sing on every song except the token instrumental track (“Aaron’s Song”) and “Place of Mind,” which Kelley sings. On 5 of the songs I’m the only singer.
12. Considering that Space Waves have always adopted a fully independent approach to music industry how is it going to be the release process of this new album? S: We are still figuring that out! We are DIY out of necessity more than anything else. We are thinking a small run of vinyl, probably 100 copies, and we want to try our best to promote it and send cds to radio stations and write to blogs. Life is probably the least hectic it’s been for us so hopefully we will do a better job with this than our previous releases. Money is always a factor though and we don’t have a lot to spend on promoting. We are also looking into registering with our PRO and all that more business side of it, but at this point I’m not sure how all that will pan out. It’s tough for us to navigate all of that and I get confused and overwhelmed. When you’re a diy band with no distribution or support it does make it harder to get noticed, I think, and with our schedules there are only so many shows we can play out. Between work and home responsibilities it does feel rather challenging…that’s why we just try and do what we can and not stress too much about it. 13. Are there any plans concerning playing in Europe in a near future and touring the upcoming album? S: Not in the near future. We haven’t really talked about touring for it yet but if we did it would probably be a smaller California tour. Again touring is something we sort of fantasize about but I don’t know how realistic it is. Maybe we will try to play some shows in L.A. once we have the album out. I’m sure we’ll have at least one album release show. 14. If you had to describe the past seven years in the band’s life how would they look like? S: Love, inspiration, dedication, frustration, isolation, confusion, perseverance, wonder, fun, therapeutic, educational, a reason for living.
The first time I came across She Rides Tigers (SRT) I got pretty well impressed by their music. Later on I was told that they could be easily compared to bands like the Black Rebel Motorcycle Club (BRMC), Queens of The Stone Age (QTSA) or even Royal Blood. I’ve found this sort of comparison a bit risky due to the fact that one knows quite well the full discography of both BRMC and QTSA as well as of Royal Blood’s mega successful first album.
SRT surprisingly good debut EP “Standing on The Edge” sounds rather different from them all as we hope to be able to demonstrate in this article. We’ve been also told that SRT could make a connection to both early Alice Cooper and Slade. Absolutely disagree with this idea. Alice Cooper stands aesthetically miles away from SRT and is a lot less raucous and lacks the epic melodicism of SRT. Early Slade was also discarded.
One recalls the days back then when we first got into Noddy Holder’s band success during the first half of the 70s just before Punk Rock showed up. SRT really sound to something else pretty much different from Slade and their northern glam rock for the working class. Later on while reading through SRT bio I came across another lot of well-known bands from which SRT supposedly draws some inspiration.
Taking into account the kind of sound they produce we’ve found that their inspirational mentors go from the notoriously obvious Led Zeppelin to the much less obvious psychedelic influence of both Temples (pretty much into The Kinks) and Tame Impala (pretty much into Cream). Anyway, there is much more on these influences/references issue. SRT also acknowledge some mentoring to The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Kinks, T-Rex, The Who, Cream, Sex Pistols and finally (we agree on this one) Oasis. Pretty eclectic!
One of the most interesting things about trying to write about music, whether it is an EP/LP review or an in depth article lays upon the kind of research I like to do about it to more appropriately understand the way cultural background and emergent musical influences of a band actually articulate in order to weave a particular sonic outcome. Usually what bands take as their most cherished influences isn't as much reflected or noticeable in the music as they consider it to be.
This turns out to be quite puzzling sometimes. Almost an archaeological challenge trying to build some sort of connection between the references bands say they pretty much have in opposition to the aural effect they exert in our eardrums.
On the other hand the sound of most bands we write about shows that there usually are less obvious influences behind official ones which contribute rather surprisingly to the final aesthetic sonic product. This seems to be precisely the case with SRT.
When we start listening to this solid, exciting power trio from Chicago, formed by Joe O'Leary (vocals/guitar), James Scott (bass/vocals) and Matt McGuire (drums/percussion) blasting their deliciously electrifying rock & roll all over the place we inevitably feel the compulsion to check list all their influences as mentioned a few lines above and see if they really match with the final sonic blast seal of “Standing on The Edge”.
We have done it and digged through the full discography of all those bands mentioned and easily dismissed the direct influence of most of them behind the crafting of the raw, visceral infection-contagious, hook and riff powerful energized sonic blow of SRT and their highly recommendable debut EP.
Objectively and as stated a few paragraphs above we see no sign of Alice Cooper whatsoever in the work of this trio hailing from Chicago. Alice Cooper lacks raucousness, melodicism and most of all lacks the essential sonic references which mould the soundscape of SRT. The same applies to Slade? Noddy Holder and his wild bunch managed to have quite some success during the 70s mostly during the first half of the decade, nevertheless when you go dig for Slade early albums namely Play It Loud (1970) and Slayed? (1972) and essaying a comparison with the sonic boom of SRT we easily conclude that the connection is too fragile to be even taken into account.
But what about The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Kinks, The Who, Cream or The Sex Pistols? Can we spot any direct overwhelming and unavoidable influence of these famous bands upon the final result of SRT “Standing on The Edge”? Probably we can, but only through some kind of mediation made possible by the contribution of other bands that according to our understanding seem to really have huge ascent over the SRT aesthetics meaning that only very indirectly can those so called influences actually affect the Chicago powerful trio.
So which are after all the backbone influences behind SRT drenched guitar and excitingly pounding rhythm section? Nothing better than a track by track inquiry through SRT debut EP to clarify our point of view and conclude that the band is the best perfect blend of two of the most iconic and representative BritPop bands ever: Sterophonics and Oasis. This is their hardcore influence at least as we sensed it. BRMC has slight influence on SRT mainly through “Specter at the Feast” album mostly noted because of some kind of post punk bass lines though in general one can hardly spot many similarities between both bands considering BRMC’s previous albums' aesthetics.
The same goes with little difference for QTSA though we can spot a bigger influence than with BRMC for there are traces of “Rated R”, “Era Vulgaris” and “...Like Clockwork” albums in the SRT sonic proposal though the dirty aggressive experimentalism articulated with a more direct rock sound we acknowledge in most of the QTSA albums is not so easily found in “Standing on The Edge”, but SRT isn’t supposed to be a carbon copy of the bands they like or are influenced by.
We dare to say that from the first track of the EP (Chase The Flame) to the very last one (Stronger) there is a massive presence of both Stereophonics and Oasis. While going through each one of the albums from both these bands we acknowledged major influences in the whiskey vocals, the drenched fuzzy distorted guitar trademark of Kelly Jones and Noel Gallagher, the thick vibrating bass lines, the steady pounding drumming and most of all the highly admirable feature of “Standing on the Edge” which is a sublime re-enactment of the epic melodic patterns, atmosphere and anthemic vibrations able to bind a whole generation together around songs such like “Local Boy in the Photograph”, “I Could Lose Ya”, “Trouble”, “Doorman”, or “I Got Your Number” (Stereophonics) or “Wonderwall”, “Live Forever”, “Supersonic”, “Champagne Supernova” and “Look Back in Anger” (Oasis).
In spite of being an American band SRT were able to somehow resurrect that inflammable generous memoir of the best ever made BritPop sustained in some zepplelin-esque roots rock painted with some strokes of The Cult from “Sonic Temple” and “Beyond Good and Evil” era. "Standing on The Edge" is beyond doubt one of the best EP’s we have reviewed this year. Nicely played not overproduced and superbly appealing to the ear (drum). Well done Joe, James and Matt! This is an 8/10 EP for INDIEVOTION and it surely leaves room for some justified great expectations concerning the SRT first album in a near future.
Sometimes I Sit And Think, And Sometimes I Just Sit it really is one of those albums (the very same, also applies to A Sea of Split Peas) that makes you want to spin it round and round while indulgently sipping some tequila with lime juice, brown sugar and crumbled ice while the fan wheel revolves some fresh air in the warm lounge in a late afternoon. It is almost a physical impossibility not to fall in love with the album song after song, spiral after spiral.
This is the kind of album that gets stuck into your head in such a way that it travels you everywhere risking becoming a kind of second skin. How can you avoid the urge to suddenly begin singing “Don’t jump little boy, don’t jump off that roof, you’ve got your whole life ahead of you’re still in your youth, I’d give anything to have skin like you!” in the middle of the traffic jam? Or "My internal monologue is saturated analogue, It’s scratched and drifting, I’ve become attached to the idea it’s all a shifting dream bitter-sweet philosophy" when you plunge in your machinery of thoughts at the end of the day, but also "I wanna go out but I wanna stay home"
when your girl wants to go out socialize and all you want is to watch football on TV and stuff yourself in beer and fried chips? You can't.
Just for the record Courtney Barnett’s exhilarating debut album hit the recording studio in April 2014 at Head Gap, Melbourne though the finishing details were delayed mostly due to the massive touring and finally released on March 20 coinciding with her North American tour plenty with highly awaited acclaimed gigs at SXSW 2015.
This album is the perfect testimonial from a musician that breathes' talent, but most of all from a person searching the right bias between the times of clinical depression, high anxiety and a sudden, though very consistent and physically demanding success through massive touring and media attention, which kept Courtney Barnett out of her natural comfy environment, friends and girlfriend Jen Cloher for weeks in a row. So it’s more than natural that when one gets deeper and deeper on this album one inevitably confronts with someone who deals with the normal up and down the emotional escalator, someone who gets worried, thoughtful, saddened and happy to the extreme and shares it within songs.
Sometimes I Sit And Think, And Sometimes I Just Sit offers a set of eleven masterfully crafted songs enhanced with a musicality that grabs you right on spot needless to say that Courtney Barnett reveals herself as a tremendous guitar player with a very peculiar technique. She never uses a pick but fingering and contrary to what we maybe think of this does not stop her from switching between musical genres spanning from dreamy melodies to pop grunge, alt country and psych rock.
Music media really loves to label everything making it more identifiable for the public assuming that the labeling is anyhow the equivalent to a great scientific discovery or a first step of man on the moon. One believes that the sustainable though somehow surprisingly sudden success of Courtney Barnett’s music left many critics and music journalists a bit confused and one knows how these people like to feel assured of what they say and write but also make some orthodox doctrine about their intellectual masturbation.
The press was fast in cataloging Courtney Barnett music as «slacker» which is quite an inappropriate term to apply to her music considering the term generally suggests some lethargic state of mind, non participation, apathy and aimlessness, some sort of alienated deep uninterested for the sociopolitical causes. Slacker is a term that goes for underachievement which is quite the very opposite of what we can actually say about Courtney Barnett considering all the sustainable aspects emanating from the way she is building her career. Quite predictably then the music press simply considered that Courtney Barnett music exhaled deep unavoidable influence from all slacker rockers of the 90s just like she was merely emulating their work. And they did the very same because of the grungy tone and mood of “Pedestrian at Best” swearing that it got to be some Nirvana in it.
Why it has to be like that? Why not Magic Dirt or The Drones? It seems a bit myopic even insulting to consider Courtney Barnett’s music as maybe merely replication of her supposed influences. Considering all released material and not only her brutally addictive debut album one perceives that as a listener she consumed a lot of different sonic stuff. People may feel tempted to label Courtney Barnett is half Sheryl Crow, half Stephen Malkmus; half Liz Phair, half Pavement.
It’s easier to go for this let’s say more evident sonorities than to consider other less obvious but rather sustainable alternatives. It hardly seems deniable that Courtney Barnett soundscape ultimately feeds itself on some early 70s New York underground aesthetics. There’s so much of Lou Reed, so much of Tom Verlaine and Television, even some strong bits of Robert Quine in her music that all summed up helps one to picture her so called influences in a rather different approach.
We figure out that there is a strong presence of Evan Dando; The Lemonheads; Dan Kelly; Darren Hanlon and even of The Simpletons, in much of her material but most of all there is a huge influence of Jen Cloher on her music and last but not least of Patti Smith which spiritually floats over Courtney Barnett aesthetics subtly. If one goes through the albums Horses and Radio Ethiopia we easily understand tracks such like Small Poppies or Out of the Woodwork.
It is hugely rewarding to see that Courtney Barnett is much more than someone who releases nice music. She is somehow reconstructing and re configuring a musical thread by revisiting past generations of musicians that can really be a good help for the further deeper consolidation of her art which demands from the presumed critics an informed approach to her sonic inspiration.
As said a few paragraphs above Sometimes I Sit And Think, And Sometimes I Just Sit offers a very cohesive set of songs opening with Elevator Operator tells a story of man who likes to go to tall buildings at the same time as a woman on Botox that he meets on the elevator urges him not to throw himself out from the roof onto the pavement. This track brings some good and light power pop with steady guitar and bass with an effective drum pattern all relinquished with some Hammond style organ which give a pretty soulful vibe to this theme.
Pedestrian At Best, is generally a song about self-awareness of who you are and how you managed to get to where you are now. It’s a song in which past meets future in the uncertainty of what the present might represent. The garage punk song of the album awesomely energetic and inviting for the mosh pit with massive reverb noise guitars and enraged rhythm section. An Illustration of Loneliness (Sleepless in NY) is mostly a song about Courtney Barnett's longing from her girlfriend due to sudden and drastic change of life habits and routines out of her natural environment due to the huge success of Sea of Split Peas which implied loads of gig ’n’ tour.
Another power pop song reminding some Luscious Jackson material, but enriched with a kind of funky sway and slightly distorted guitars with a Lou Reed/Robert Quine touch that marvelously lingers too through Small Poppies that tells us not only about resentment towards other people's talent and success as it seems to mostly be about the social phenomenon of domestic violence. The instrumental parts of this song leaves in the listener the feeling that the underground music scene from NY mid seventies landed in Melbourne. Fabulous track with all instruments on the right spot.
Depreston is in a way the midpoint song of the album and so far so good! It tells us about the hardships of nailing the perfect affordable dwell to live in Melbourne’s suburbs, and how each house has its previous life. An indie pop lovely tune with gentle guitar playing, melody and soloing reminding of some tunes from The Go-Betweens embellished with a gorgeous steady broomstick snare work. Aqua Profunda! Meaning “deep waters” is a summer song about someone trying to impress the next lane swimmer, but the outcome was not the desired one. The musicality of this theme has some cool, nice indie rock features mostly the rhythm section work with a very present drumming pattern and bass line colored with a guitar chopping which makes The Breeders come to mind.
This sort of Breeder-esque vibe is also present in Dead Fox is a well humored account about the way of the world concerning the quality of what we eat, short-term profit and greed over environmental issues of any order from animal rights to consumer health. The way the guitar and bass link together just like there were two lead guitars works amazingly and the perfect rock drumming does marvelous to the song as well as extending its tentacles onto Nobody Really Cares If You Don't Go to the Party which is a song dealing with the interaction issue between different personalities and reciprocity in relationships and the opposition between extroverts and introverts and how easily people ignore the differences preferring to condemn and reject them.
Debbie Downer is musically a happy song in spite of the lyric subject tells about someone depressing, non positive, that feeds on negativity. The opening of the song reminds The Doors “Light My Fire” keyboard part with a pretty interesting groove. Kim's Caravan, is a wonderful dark song about the duality of the human condition in general, we are light and darkness, good and evil, life and death, silence and noise, significance and insignificance. Musically the song has some background sonic landscape that perfectly emulates what would be someone/something slowly drowning in the depths while reverberating, magnificent guitars rise in steady blows reminding again the Lou Reed/Robert Quine guitar work. Fantastic.
Boxing Day Blues is a somehow enigmatic conversational style song about someone that isn't there for another when needed, a song about disillusionment and the defilement of a relationship. This is the closing song of the album and it closes it per opposition to the vibrant opening song. It somehow resembles some acoustic work of Robert Forster but mostly (still) of Lou Reed and his Perfect Day from the Transformer album. No, Boxing Day Blues does not sound to Perfect Day but the atmosphere and moody balance of Lou Reed’s song is all there. And it’s so cool.
One has already said enough about Courtney Barnett to conclude that we are in the presence of an extremely humble, down to earth person with dazzling talent in the artistry domain she has chosen to work. We're also convinced that her debut album will easily be in the top 20 of the 2015 best albums because it is in fact a great album with excellent songs and musical maturity that gives the listener the assurance of further development and experimentation.
When one goes through Courtney Barnett album if we are honest about it, we inevitably have to recognize that there are signs or hints of influences she has from other musicians (which is only natural) but we undoubtedly see the evidence of a personal style either in guitar playing, singing or songwriting. A proper aesthetic even if unintentionally.
The mundane euphoria concerning Courtney Barnett resides in the fact that she is original and must not be enrolled with the lot of girl bands just like she is one among many. By her own merit she entered without making too much fuss in the restricted group of top class women acts where for instance one also can spot: Anna Calvi, Catherine Anne Davies, Warpaint, St. Vincent, Jen Cloher, Chelsea Wolfe, And The Kids, Emily Jane White, Daisy Victoria, Marissa Nadler, Sarah Blasko or Sharon Van Etten to name just those who came to mind while we’re writing this article.
One of the most amazing features of Courtney Barnett is that not only she does have an incisive opinion about what is going on around the world, but she puts it with a certain laid back state of mind that may sound slackly, when in fact it is more like she was a kind of third party, someone who keeps distance to gain better focus and produce opinion with humor like she was the Sarah Silverman of electric guitar. Enough said, we are in the presence not of a new Bob Dylan like some like to call her, but right the contrary in the face of someone who reached the pedestal that only Courtney Barnett [all comparisons put aside] could have reach.
INDIEVOTION ranking for “Sometimes I Sit And Think, And Sometimes I Just Sit” is 9/10
