Courtney Barnett - Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit on the Moon and Other Musings

Drawings of chairs by Courtney Barnett

Last week saw the release of a number of interesting records by female solo artists and a group - Laura Marling, LoneLady and the Staves but Miss Barnett's is my favourite and so she becomes a repeat offender on the Moon as her EP collection had its very own post last year.

Laura Marling has featured on two of my previous years best ofs but to me she had got into a two album rut of repeating herself but not as successfully as on her first two records, however the 25 years olds 5th record is very fine, it it obviously influenced by her time over the pond and is a quite diverse set of songs that would fit rather well into a Ryan Adams LP and the sound of the record is what I would think many of Mr Adams fans would want a new Ryan Adams LP to sound like...

The Staves second LP is rather like the second from Lilly and Madeline, or the last one from First Aid Kit, in that it is not much of change apart from it is a bit too polished. But also, like both mentioned above, it is another gorgeous record sung beautifully with some fine songs but none are quite as magnificent as Wisely & Slow from their debut, which is one of my songs of the teenies.

Then there is LoneLady -  a lady from the north west of The North who has released a very interesting 2nd LP indeed, it incorporates many of the best electronic influences from her home city and the very best of Prince. I am not sure how good it is yet but the single Groove It Out is a bit of a classic.

But in this day and age the best guitar music is either coming from female solo/led/fronted artists or from Australia and Courtney Barnett ticks both boxes. She may not get away with so many more talkie verses but this is only her debut and the lyrics are great, whilst tracks like Small Poppies show that she will not have much problem branching out in the future. Rather cleverly the album was streamable via soundcloud embedded playlists on music sites and blogs a week before release but you could not find it (or download) from the Soundcloud site and now those blogs/sites have replaced the Soundcloud playlist with a Spotify one as below. On Ubend you can also hear her cover the whole of the Kick album from INXS and it is brilliant. All the other LPs mentioned can be streamed/synced from the usual places.