Music fans and critics are heralding Aussie alt-rocker Courtney Barnett as a kind of songwriting Lena Dunham — an unapologetically visceral, totally riveting, precocious over-sharer. “Bottling things up is not ever going to help,” the 27-year-old explains, “so I like the extreme form of not bottling things up.”
Courtney Barnett Announces Debut Album, Drops New Video 'Pedestrian At Best': Watch
Like Dunham’s, Barnett’s confessions on her full-length debut, Sometimes I Sit and Think, Sometimes I Just Sit, released March 23 on her own Milk Records through indie stalwart Mom + Pop, can seem both personal and universal, as if the singer-songwriter-guitarist has been charged with channeling her generation’s inner dialogues. “I’m a fake, I’m a phony, I’m awake, I’m alone, I’m homely,” she drones on the single “Pedestrian at Best.” “Depreston,” a song about rising house prices in a Melbourne suburb, turns banal details (shower handrails, coffee cannisters) into vivid beauty -- one of the reasons NPR recently declared her the greatest lyricist in rock today. (Ellen DeGeneres introduced her March 16 performance on her show by calling her “one of my favorite new artists.”)