Courtney Barnett
Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit

In the alt-rock Australian and musty, overtly muscular and very, too much DJ Ringo-Courtney Love of the single Pedestrian At Best, Courtney Barnett lucidly says: "Put me on a pedestal and I'll only disappoint you." I think it is wise to comply with the will of the singer-songwriter most hyped at the moment, who, although pushed everywhere beyond her natural scope and real merits, is neither idiotic nor talentless. So no, better not to put the opener Elevator Operator on a pedestal, because there are plenty of tracks like that in the discographies of ignored bands like Lovely Eggs. Or An Illustration of Loneliness, a radio-friendly nursery rhyme that even a Juliette Lewis could pull off. But not even Dead Fox which lives mainly on easy catchiness and good instrumental insights, like the reverse guitar parts in the chorus, but doesn't show particular inspiration. Debbie Downer, then, easily slips away like a Taylor Swift would or one of those things that the radio plays and you half-hear while picking your nose at the traffic light because the tape deck, CD player, or whatever it is, is broken. Not even the little organ helps; in fact.

There is also an annoying patina of ostentatious simplicity, of a demure manner à la She and Him, which the title Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit sums up well. Okay: you're naive, well done.

The worst is said: the risk of overexposure and consequent disappointment should be avoided. Now let’s turn to the good. And indeed there is: the best lies in the seven full minutes of Small Poppies, a leap to the best nineties. With Barnett's vocal softness more laid-back than sexy, more rebellious girl than Hope Sandoval, and guitar phrases with tremolo that sometimes surf and liquid reverbs, at the end they ache and clash, and the bass - very delicate, in such situations - which in a minimal plucking lightens up, alleviates and if Hey was that beautiful, how much credit did Kim Deal deserve?The poetry of concrete everyday life, jotted down on a notepad or drafted on a cellphone, comes out here with all its potential. And Depreston is a soft country, with brushes and no particular inventiveness, but Our Girl's voice emerges triumphantly, sighing, childlike and melancholic without losing a semitone. She sings of moving to a new house, the old roommate just died and left her things there.

But also the pulp-surf groove of Kim's Caravan gives joys and knows how to explode obsessively into a "So take what you want from me" more tearful than whining. And the Nanni Moretti-esque anthem of Nobody Really Cares If You Don't Go to The Party, "I wanna go out but I wanna stay home" works because it says a lot about the Australian attitude to certain rock dinosaur choruses with big guitars, but meanwhile it somehow manages to rejuvenate it all, while clearly borrowing from Stealers Wheel.

Cosmic pessimisms, misanthropies, and objective correlatives, but without hermetism, because Barnett seems at heart a genuinely simple person, one who would treat you to a beer at the club. Simplicity, apparent naïveté, and genuineness must be managed in the best way because the cloying nature is lurking there, and how it strikes nowadays. Barnett demonstrates the intelligence and means not to fall into it, but this debut album seems focused only at times, decidedly less than the double EP that preceded it - worth finding, even if only for Avant Gardener - while remaining an overall enjoyable work. For the moment, nothing more.