Courtney Barnett – Things Take Time, Take Time
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
worst 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.
~8.0
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