When people began noticing Courtney Barnett, they noticed her singing. They noticed her dry wit and her evocative lyrics, and they noticed her sprechgesang, the way everything she sang came off almost as narration. People then inevitably compared her to Lou Reed, something that Barnett has inevitably pushed back on, to the point where when contributing a cover for the late Hal Willner’s I’ll Be Your Mirror compilation, Barnett’s take was “I’ll Be Your Mirror”, one of the few tracks on the album not originally sung by Reed. There’s no doubt Reed was a significant influence on Barnett but not to the extent that many first posited. Instead, the strongest comparison may not be stylistic, as Barnett has pushed hard to forge her own career, but in the way that career has unfolded.
Barnett doesn’t have a bad album (so far), what she has, like Reed: is a loose and ingenious beginning that presaged the rest of her career, similar to the Velvets; a classic and defining debut, much like Transformer; a misunderstood follow-up akin to Berlin, but less experimental; a surprisingly effective collaboration, like Songs for Drella; and now, a light and breezy, singer-songwriter piece, a moment that could extend to a series of similar albums. Coney Island Baby, Sally Can’t Dance, Street Hassle, these albums had their own style and excursions warranted by Reed’s attempt to do as he wanted until his late-career masterpieces would gestate. Here’s to hearing Barnett’s take on Metal Machine Music, it won’t take long for her to feel open enough to experiment a little more.
Those comparisons are obviously loaded, and a bit misleading, but the point should be clear – with Things Take Time, Take Time, Barnett has begun the process of delivering albums without the exalted reputations of her earlier release cycles. That’s a good thing, although her newest album is her “least great” outing so far, it’s filled with a charm and intimacy that feels new and refreshing. Barnett’s personality is there but muted, her charisma always carrying the songs even if not taking them as far as they could go. These limits offer something new to her catalog, an excursion that may not be exciting but is plenty pleasant.
Things Take Time, Take Time is charming, finding the perfect note for the mood it’s trying to evoke, and even at its smallest and most benign, it’s captivating, the kind of album destined to become a favorite of a very specific subset of Courtney fans. It feels well-worn too, a well-deserved breather after three near-concurrent classics. This could be the future for Barnett, at least for now she has developed enough of standing and reached a point in her career where she can keep releasing albums that attempt small gains and specific moods instead of eclipsing her masterwork. Every now and again, as is the case with “Here’s the Thing”, she comes close to ringing that bell anyway. Barnett will have a long career as a songwriter, one that will inevitably have its peaks and valleys, and to be clear this is still firmly in peak territory, but Things Take Time, Take Time proves that that career is going to be worth following.
Photo by Mia-Mala McDonald
