Exiles

Courtney Barnett, Sometimes I Sit And Think and Sometimes I Just Sit

Way back in the pre-Cambrian period of alternative music (1993), Liz Phair surfaced out of nowhere with Exile in Guyville, a wonderful work of tunefulness, guitar noise, and tales of a love sought and lost in Guyville. Overly long?  Sure.  But it was full of orginality, wit and sharp observation.  What made it buzz-worthy, though, was the story that came with it: that this was Phair's reworking of the Stones' classic Exile on Main Street.  I heard slim evidence for this claim apart from the title. Tweny years later, your experience of this music is actually enhanced if you forget this little bit of misdirection.

Australian Courtney Barnett doesn't need such a ploy.  Sometimes I Sit and Think hails from the same musical neighborhood as Exile, but Barnett is traveling lighter. She's way less angry and, thanks perhaps to Phair, Carrie Brownstein, Kim Gordon and the generation of Riot Grrrls who came along since, she has nothing to prove as a guitar toting woman. She certainly needs no invented story and, as a gay woman, couldn't give a rat's ass about Guyville.  Phair is an obvious musical touchstone, but so are Neil Young, Beck and especially Jack White.  

"Sometimes..." opens with a quick stomp sung to an "Elevator Operator:"

"Depreston" is a sentimental, strummed winter's tale that almost makes you feel the low angled January sun. 

Barnett hits her angst-y stride with "Nobody Really Cares if You Don't Go to the Party," and its ultimate FOMO refrain: "I want to go out but I want to stay home."  

Sisters are doing it for themselves.  For real.