Courtney Barnett
Liverpool 02 Academy
December 1st 2015
Live Review
I wasn’t really going to watch
Courtney Barnett play live and not write anything about it was I? It’s a sort
of a given, a bit of tradition by now.
The show at Liverpool on December
1st would be the fourth time that I’d seen her live this year; once
at Manchester in April, and twice at Glastonbury in June. As I’d written about
the Manchester gig for this blog and the two Glastonbury shows for my last
book, I felt that I really should do the same for this Liverpool show. It would
have seemed odd being there and not scribbling a few words down. It would be a
way of ending the year of seeing Courtney Barnett live in appropriate way.
The tickets had come out ages
before the show. In fact, I think I had them before June and therefore before I
saw her at Glastonbury. The gig had been a long time coming and was a little
ray of sunshine on the (far) horizon as autumn turned into winter.
It was a rainy evening in
Liverpool as I headed off to the O2. It had been rainy and blustery all day.
Things weren’t looking that good.
Unlike the rest of the tour, the
Liverpool date was the only one that hadn’t sold out. There were still tickets
available on the door. I’d also read a couple of brief reviews of the gig from
the night before, in Manchester. From these accounts, Courtney Barnett hadn’t
seemed to be particularly interested in everything, not talking that much and
not really interacting with the crowd. Maybe she’d reached the point of no
return, maybe she was burning out after touring the album across the world for
the best part of a year or more. I was a touch sceptical about these reviews;
surely that wasn’t the case and maybe the reviewer wasn’t an especially big
fan, but you never can be sure. Maybe it had all got to be a bit much.
Additionally, a rainy Tuesday
night in Liverpool in what could be a half-empty venue mightn’t be the best way
for things to pick up. Tuesday nights are never a good night for a gig;
work/school etc the next day. People nervously checking their watches towards
the end of the gig so they don’t miss the last bus or train home doesn’t add up
to a great atmosphere. Furthermore, I’d gone on so much about the wonder that
is Courtney Barnett to one of my work colleagues that he’d crumbled from my
incessant nagging and got a ticket for himself and his wife for the gig. Was
the first time that they’d see her live destined to be a bit of a let-down? I
feared that it might be.
Walking from where I’d parked the
car to the O2 only took me five minutes or so. There was a brief gap in the
rain so I didn’t get soaked and by the time I turned up at the door I was
pleased to see that there was a queue to get in No drenching and clearly not a
half-empty gig. Things were looking up.
Once inside I was pleasantly
surprised to find the place pretty much full. If it hadn’t sold out beforehand
then I’d have bet there were only a few tickets left on the door. I’d missed
the first of the two support bands, Zuzu but did catch all of the second act,
Big Scary; a band from Melbourne who I thought were pretty good in a sort of
early Talking Heads/MGMT way. I’ve read a couple of other reviews of the
Courtney Barnett tour and Big Scary didn’t go down that well, being seen as a
bit synthy and 80’s-ish. I think that is kind of the point, a sort of naïve and
fractured pop. Well, I liked them and certainly would give them another go.
But I wasn’t really there to see
the support acts, irrespective of how good or bad they were. I was there to see
Courtney Barnett. It wasn’t that packed that I had to elbow my way to the
front, but busy enough for it to take me a good few minutes of squeezing
through to get a good vantage point at the right hand side of the stage. Right
next to the tall PA stack. As I fumbled I my pocket for my notebook and pen
(which I nearly had left at home after wondering whether it was worth it), I
realised that standing so close to it might not be the most sensible thing to
have done. It might be a bit loud. It was too late though. I wasn’t going to
inch my way through the crowd again.
There was a list of stage times
sellotaped to a door next to the stage, showing that Courtney Barnett was due
on at 9.30 with a curfew of 11.00. That’d do me. An hour and a half set. If she
turned up on time.
But Courtney Barnett isn’t The
Fall; she’s too professional for turning up late. (Not that I mind The Fall
doing that; it’s what I expect them to do. I’d be a bit wary if they did turn
up on time for a gig.) So spot on at 9.30 ish, she and the band bounded on
stage with the sound of Suzi Quatro’s Can the Can playing over the PA (what a
great tune by the way, I really must listen to it again!), and launched
straight into “Elevator Operator”,
the first track from the “Sometimes I
Sit…” album.
Have you ever been at a gig and
you know from the get-go, from the first few bars of the first song that it’s
going to be a good one and you’re going to see something special? Well, that’s
how it was. I just knew! All my earlier ridiculous doubts disappeared like
faint mist when Courtney Barnett stepped up to the mic, grinned at everyone and
started to sing.
It might have been a Tuesday
night, it might have been raining outside and maybe every last ticket hadn’t
been sold, yet it didn’t matter. This was what it was all about. That boppy-as-fuck
song was the perfect way to kick things off. And the band sounded so very, very
tight. The last time I’d seen Courtney Barnett was the second of two sets she’d
played at Glastonbury in one day and despite enjoying it immensely, there was a
certain ramshackle quality to it all. It was all a tad loose and probably only
to be expected after a long day. This time however, there was a sharpness and
precision to it all. Not one dropped note, nothing fluffed. A definite and
diamond-like intensity flowed from the stage. Whether this was because by now
they’d played the songs so much with the relentless gigging, I’m not sure but I
was staggered with it all. There was still an undercurrent of movement within
the song and it would be giving the wrong impression to say that that it was
too studied and too precise. This was not a dialled in, perfect muso rock star,
what-city-are-we-in-tonight performance. It just seemed like they’d stuck the
perfect balance between playing the songs spot-on and allowing them to, well,
breathe, if that makes any sort of sense. I looked around and saw that people
were jumping up and down, smiling and grinning. It was all going down well. I
realised that I was grinning as well. I couldn’t help it.
“Thank you!” So Courtney was talking
to us! Maybe she’d just had a bad night in Manchester 24 hours earlier. (That’s
understandable; I’ve had plenty of bad nights in Manchester.) She nodded to
Dave Mudie and Bones Sloane, the driving force of the CB3, the veritable engine
room of the whole shebang and it was straight into “Avant Gardener”, the track that I’ll never get bored with, the
track with the killer lines that invariably bring a lump to my throat. I
thought that she might have left it towards the end of the seat or even played
it in the encore, but no, hear it was, second song in and kicking hard. If
you’ve never heard any Courtney Barnett (and if not, why not?), then make a
point of tracking this song down. This is where it all starts. Or started for
me anyway.
“Dead
Fox” from the
album came along next, and I noticed Courtney Barnett and the band smiling at
each other throughout the whole song.
They were clearly having a good time. Possibly it was because she was wearing
a cooler-than cool Flashdance t-shirt or that she was sipping from a bottle of
water throughout the set. You don’t need to get pissed to have a good time in
Liverpool Courtney!
The first three fast-paced tracks
were despatched in rapid succession and then things slowed down a bit with “Small Poppies”.This is a darker tune
and one that shows her not just as a purveyor of elegantly crafted pop songs,
but also able to construct tales that are bleaker and more introspective. It’s
particularly noteworthy that within this live incarnation of the track she is
able to thrash away, almost in a Sonic Youth fashion on her guitar due largely
to the foundation laid by the band. They’re like the Crazy Horse to Courtney’s
Neil Young. They are that good.
With only one album and the
double e.p/l.p “A Sea of Split Peas”
behind her, then it might be thought that Courtney Barnett hasn’t really got
enough material to pay a full hour and a half set, but that’s far from the
case. The opposite applies really because every song she’s released is worthy
of an outing in a live setting. There are no fillers, nothing on the records
that might even make you pause and think that one particular track or another
wouldn’t translate or work outside on the studio.
She mixed up the set really well,
playing older songs like “Lance Jr”
and “Canned Tomatoes” alongside “An Illustration of Loneliness” and “Debbie Downer” from the album. As a
measure of how good the older songs are, they still sound as fresh as ever and
familiarity isn’t breeding contempt; either from the band or the audience. We
were all happy to hear them once again and the band didn’t seem at all bored
with giving them another airing.
It’s interesting that the
audience was comprised of quite a fair few older folks (like myself) as well as
a lot of young kids in their late teens or early twenties. Courtney Barnett
seems to have hit a wide ranging chord. This was especially noticeable during “Depreston” when the sing-a-along spread
right through the crowd and not just a select few fans.
Courtney Barnett then mentioned
something that still makes me kick myself.
“Anyone here tonight who saw us
last play in Liverpool?”
A few cheers.
“Well, that was one of our best gigs
ever! Thanks for sticking with us!”
A few more cheers. I cursed to
myself.
Now that gig was a couple of
years ago at the Zanzibar and as part of Sound City. The very next day, not much
more than 12 hours later, I heard “Avant
Gardener” for the very first time and was instantly hooked. “If” is a very small
word indeed, but for the sake of 24 hours and if I’d heard it,, I would have
been at that “best ever” gig. A lesson learned for sure. Seize the day indeed!
What was a bit of surprise to me
was that halfway through the set, the lights dimmed and she played a stonking
version of “Kim’s Caravan” from the
album. This dark, very dark and yet thoughtful tune is for me a highlight on
the album, possibly the best song she’s ever written and one which gives a
fascinating direction for where she may go next. She hadn’t played it the three
times I’d seen it earlier in the year, so to stand, jaw dropping with
magnificence of it all, as it built into a ear-shattering crescendo, strobes
blinking on stage was a real treat. On record the song is outstanding and one
that I imagine would have been difficult to replicate live, yet they managed to
pull it off with some style.
Another sign of a good gig is
when it’s over before you realise it, and they wrapped it up with "Pedestrian at Best”; all ripped up, seismically
loud and with bucketloads of style
They waved us a quick goodbye and
then popped back on stage with Big Scary to do a happy and joyous cover of The
Saints “Know Your Product” before concluding matters with a raucous version
of “History Eraser”.
And exactly at 11.00 p.m. it was
all over. A Tuesday night that ended up being even better than I could have
hoped for. As everyone patiently queued to get out into the rain, the weather
didn’t seem to matter than much anymore. We’d all had a great time; Courtney,
Dave and Bones seemed to have enjoyed themselves immensely and we’d all played
a part in something pretty special.
This would be my last Courtney
Barnett gig for 2015. It’s difficult to assess whether it was better than any
of the other three times I saw her in 2015. Maybe it’s just different every
time and probably that’s a very good thing. You can’t predict such things. What
I do know is that somewhere along the line, I’ll see her play live again and it’ll
be just as magnificent as the 1st December 2015.
There's a lot (a whole lot more!) about Courtney Barnett in my book about the Glastonbury 2015 festival, "Feels Like Going Home" here:
You can find my other writings about
Courtney Barnett on Toppermost here:
http://www.toppermost.co.uk/courtney-barnett/
Visit Courtney Barnett's Offical Site;
http://courtneybarnett.com.au/
Visit Courtney Barnett's Offical Site;
http://courtneybarnett.com.au/
And buy the records!
