courtney barnett

The award is deserved recognition for Barnett whose second album Tell Me How You Really Feel lived up to near-impossibly high expectations and has seen her touring globally to packed houses for much of the year. Recognition at home for an artist who has become truly global.

Barnett and her band (featuring Dave Mudie, Bones Sloane and Katie Harkin) also ignited the The Star Event Centre with a fierce performance of ‘Charity’.

This summer will see Courtney Barnett and her band bring their scorching live show back home to festival stages across the country. They’ll be headlining Fairgrounds Festival this weekend and continuing in early 2019 with Laneway Festival, Mona Foma and Mountain Sounds.

Today it has been announced the band will play two very special shows with Camp Cope in Darwin and Cairns in January 2019. The dream two-show-only line-up of two of Australia’s most powerful live acts should make for some extraordinary performances in the country’s far north.

Listen to the award winning album Tell Me How You Really Feel here.

Courtney Barnett and her album Tell Me How You Really Feel have been nominated for 8 ARIA Awards including Album Of The Year, Best Female Artist, Best Rock Album, Best Independent Release, Best Video and Best Live Act. Courtney was also nominated for Best Adult Contemporary Album for Lotta Sea Lice – her collaborative album with Kurt Vile. Earlier this morning at the Art Gallery Of New South Wales it was revealed that Burke Reid took home the ARIA Award for Best Engineer for his work on the record. This year’s tally of Tell Me How You Really Feel nominations matches the number that she received in 2015 for her debut Sometimes I Sit and Think, And Sometimes I Just Sit.

Six weeks ago Courtney Barnett headlined two sensational nights at the Sydney Opera House. While at the iconic World Heritage listed Sydney Opera House, Barnett took the time to record a stunning version of album closer ‘Sunday Roast’ in Bennelong Restaurant, making full use off the building’s incredible acoustics. Directed by Versus, watch the video via the image below.

After a week in which she dropped a mysterious album teaser online and indie record stores worldwide unexpectedly received vinyl copies of a previously unheard song, Courtney Barnett today announced details of her second studio album Tell Me How You Really Feel, and shared its scathing lead single‘Nameless, Faceless’.

Observers would be aware that over the course of just a few years Barnett has become internationally renowned for her distinctive and acclaimed musical lexicon. Her seemingly effortless ability to flip an intensely private sentiment on its head and make it sound universal and relatable won her fans around the world. Her debut album, Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit saw her top year-end lists and sell out shows to rabid audiences on five continents. She played the most iconic and revered festival stages, won the Australian Music Prize, J Award for Album Of the Year, APRA’s Songwriter Of the Year and four ARIAs. The album was even nominated for a Grammy and a BRIT Award.

So… how do you follow that up?

In Tell Me How You Really Feel Barnett has revealed an exhilarating and unexpected shift. From its title (A question? An order?) to the unsettling cover image – a blood-red tinted self-portrait in uncomfortably tight close up – Barnett sets a new tone. There’s a new-found directness with this record, a muscularity to the instrumentation, a tenderness in her voice and a boldness to the lyrics which speaks to Barnettentering a remarkable new phase of her musical evolution. She’s saying more, with less. Whereas once she examined the world through the prism of self-analysis, Tell Me How You Really Feel shifts that focus to those she interacts with – the good ones, the bad ones, the loved ones. Those she knows intimately and those who are strangers.

First single ‘Nameless, Faceless’ is an infectious punk rock anthem simmering with indignation and sarcasm as it examines the phenomenon of anonymous internet trolls. Through song, Barnett is using the medium she knows best to return fire.

Every lyric is memorable as Barnett quotes one of the more creative burns she’s received in a comments section, “I could eat a bowl of alphabet soup and spit out better words than you” It would be pure comedy if it didn’t invariably and insidiously cross over into anxiety about ones safety in the real world… illustrated perfectly by the chorus which borrows from a famous Margaret Atwood quote “I want to walk through the park in the dark / Men are scared that women will laugh at them / I want to walk through the park in the dark / Women are scared that men will kill them / I hold my keys between my fingers”. 

Watch the video for ‘Nameless, Faceless’ via the image below.

Tell Me How You Really Feel will be released on May 18^th through Barnett’s own label Milk! Records and Remote Control.

Pre-order Tell Me How You Really Feel via https://courtney-barnett.lnk.to/tmhyrfpr