Courtney Barnett shares her new album “Tell Me How You Really Feel.”
Courtney Barnett exposes her guts on her dark and melancholy second album, Tell Me How You Really Feel.
“No-one’s born to hate – we learn it somewhere along the way.” This is the sombre note on which Australian slacker-queen Courtney Barnett begins her second album, amid heavy-hearted, Nirvana-indebted guitar. It’s a typically astute observation from a singer-songwriter who is carving a career out of them: Barnett’s speciality is picking meat off the bones to expose the emotional skeletons of life’s seemingly mundane happenings.
Both her 2013 double-EP ‘A Sea Of Split Peas’ and 2015 debut album ‘Sometimes I Sit And Think And Sometimes I Just Sit’ established her as funny and candid – and a cracking storyteller.
In 2016, she told NME that her follow-up would be “darker and more melancholy” and immediately, opener ‘Hopelessness’ strikes a change in vibe. Whereas those previous releases felt like a chat over a cuppa between mates, ‘Tell Me How You Really Feel’ feels more personal, like opening a window into Barnett’s mind, exposing her vulnerabilities and fears in the process.
Stream her new body of work “Tell Me How You Really Feel” below.