Courtney Barnett – Things Take Time, Take Time

“In the morning I’m slow” – thus opens Courtney Barnett’s third solo album, with lead single Rae Street effortlessly adapting to the change of pace that colours the Australian singer-songwriter’s reflections across the record without ever boxing them in. Run-on sentences, proverbs tangled up until they make a new form of sense, and deeply thoughtful images rushed out across simple guitar chords as if they didn’t take any thinking about at all: Barnett’s signature style blends itself gently with the darker moments, happy to linger there, but always lets the sunlight in to lend a new perspective when the next day comes. 

There’s no lack of escapism on this record, still insistent within whichever confines Barnett had to confront. On Sunfair Sundown, listeners get snapshots of conspiratorially intimate moments, the kind where nobody is doing anything wrong except for putting themselves first. If I Don’t Hear from You Tonight holds our hand through the suggestion of an unrequited love affair – with all the drama and excess that it merits – only to remind us that love is so easy to give, so changeable, and so easy to find more of, that we can be confident in giving it away with reckless largesse. Musically, Barnett and her band evoke the persistent bass lines and calming melodies of The Velvet Underground and Nico, most potently on the pensive Here’s The Thing (where clean scales and a gentle snare drum make Barnett’s storytelling the focus), and in the shifts between metaphor and reality that mark Before You Gotta Go. 

Things Take Time, Take Time is by no means monotonous – Turning Green shifts both the energy and palette of the album, delivering what sounds like just the improvised guitar solo lead-out listeners were waiting for over the drums that increase the pace without a hint of a rush, while Write a List of Things to Look Forward To provides not just excellent advice but a blues guitar lick so catchy it veers closer to a pop song. Until Barnett is afforded the series of artsy tour venues she deserves to give these songs life onstage, fans will be more than content to catch up with this new chapter of her musicianship and poetry. 

Sylvia Unerman

Things Take Time, Take Time is released on 12^th November 2021. For further information or to order the album visit Courtney Barnett’s website here.

Watch the video for the single Write a List of Things to Look Forward To here: