Courtney Barnett - Pedestrian At Best

Without a debut album, there was always clearly far more to come, and this, Courtney Barnett’s opening gambit, is quite an entrance. Witty combinations of syllables - packed together like commuters in a sardine tin - find a new snarling bite on ‘Pedestrian At Best,’ paced purposefully over rampaging, reverby guitar riffs that teeter just on the brink of losing control; lurching outwards like tipsy fuzzy-felt people. “My internal monologue is saturated analogue/ scratched and drifting/ I think I’m attached to the idea it’s all a shifting/ dreaming bittersweet philosophy,” Courtney Barnett drawls over a stomping onslaught “I’ve got no idea how I even got here.”

Though it demands attention with a sit up and listen mentality, brash isn’t the right word for ‘Pedestrian At Best’. It still grabs and snags with every memorable little snippet, plucked direct from Courtney Barnett’s barnet-full of wry observations, and it’s every bit as irresistibly immediate, too. Well and truly hurling down the gauntlet ahead of her hotly-awaited debut album proper, ‘Sometimes I Sit and Think and Sometimes I Just Sit’, Courtney Barnett doesn’t need a pedestal, and anyway, she’ll never disappoint us.

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Tags: Reviews, Courtney Barnett, Listen