It’s hard not to root for Courtney Barnett. The Australian singer-songwriter is capable of appealing to both indie and classic rock fans with her whip-smart lyrics and blues-informed guitar style. She’s often sardonic, but she never comes across as an asshole. She’s a queer woman who has won the favor of the notoriously straight male-worshipping rockist press (Rolling Stone, NME). But most importantly, she’s without a doubt one of the best songwriters currently working in rock music. And her debut album, the stunning Sometimes I Sit And Think, And Sometimes I Just Sit, indicates she’s only getting better.
On her first major release, 2013’s The Double EP: A Sea Of Split Peas, she spun stories about everyday situations like asthma attacks and drunken daydreams that were as elaborate as they were effortless. Those songs sounded like Barnett had randomly discovered a gift for writing complex, compelling songs and let herself be possessed by it. She was successful at saying nearly everything she needed to, but she never sounded like she was trying.
On Sometimes, it’s easier to imagine Barnett actually writing lyrics down on a sheet of paper. There’s a literary bent to songs like “Depreston,” with its deluge of imagery, or “Elevator Operator,” the tale of a disillusioned businessman as told by an omniscient narrator that has bit of a crush on her subject. “Elevator Operator” is Barnett’s first third-person song, and it’s a shame she doesn’t write more. Her main (albeit minor) flaw as a songwriter is her self-absorption, and “Elevator Operator” proves she can surmount this hurdle with ease.
Sometimes improves over its predecessor in its use of time. Split Peas‘ songs often meandered for well over five minutes; here, only three run over four. This gives Sometimes a marvelous sense of momentum, especially during the opening three songs, which tumble into each other like dominoes and show off everything Barnett does well: dense lyrics, searing (but never superfluous) blues guitar licks and, now, concise pop tunes.
I suspect writing shorter songs was a sort of exercise for Barnett. The need to condense her free-associative lyrics has brought out the best in her. On “Pedestrian At Best,” she crams what seems like a nine-minute song’s worth of lyrics into four. Rather than rambling leisurely as on Split Peas, she sounds like she’s racing the music with her words. The resulting amount of content in the song is staggering, and she one-ups it on “Aqua Profunda,” a mini-opera about impressing a fellow swimmer that clocks in at two minutes on the nose.
There are longer songs here, too. “Small Poppies” is straight out of Split Peas, a seven-minute blues with sparser lyrics than average; it’s not her best song, but it slows the album’s pace enjoyably. Five-minute “Depreston” is pretty, but perhaps a bit obvious in its reliance on imagery, and coming after “Small Poppies,” it makes for a bit of a mid-album doldrum. Seven-minute “Kim’s Caravan” is the worst song here, a series of well-intentioned environmental platitudes that Barnett seems to have thought was profound enough to be the album’s Big Penultimate Epic; it’s not.
But these tunes are outliers, relics of the past, and one of the best things about Sometimes is that for how well-executed it is — it still sounds like it could be improved on. Barnett’s learned how to write pop songs, and “Elevator Operator” hints at a skill we haven’t seen the full extent of yet. She’s unlikely to stagnate, but even if she keeps doing what she’s doing now, she’ll still be producing some of the best rock music on the planet.

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Photo courtesy of Milk! Records