The last time this reviewer saw Courtney Barnett play in her home town of Melbourne, it was for a bushfire benefit show the summer of 2019-2020.
Little did we know that large shows, tours and generally live performance would completely come grinding to a halt across the world, and especially in this city just three months later.So it was fitting, then, that Barnett should kick off her Australian tour for her outstanding third record, last year's 'Things Take Time, Take Time', at the Forum Melbourne last night (17 March).
While the set is a much more pared-back, plaintive and slow-burning collection – the kind that inspires reviewers to use words like 'endearingly laconic' and 'lackadaisical' – fans suspected the songs would take on a much bigger, more immediate shape in front of a sold-out Forum crowd.
And for the most part, they did. But also they didn't need to. Barnett, silent to the audience between songs for about five tracks, managed to weave her catalogue together, and if anything made their contrasts even more pronounced and enjoyable.
Covering most of the 2021 set, she also delivered 'Elevator Operator', 'Avant Gardener', 'Pedestrian At Best' and crowd favourite 'Depreston', which she admitted, after asking the packed crowd if anyone lived in the inner-north suburb of Preston, admitted that after she wrote the song she realised the rental she looked at was in neighbouring Coburg.
While songs from 2018's 'Tell Me How You Really Feel' were thin on the ground, her reworking of 'Walkin' On Eggshells' was stunning, and made total sense. It wasn't that her new material had to fit in with her old, but that she had to find space for those tracks now.
There was no absence of dirgy, pedal-driven guitar noise, but surprisingly it was in the lighter, happier, more buoyant moments from 'Things Take Time, Take Time' that really starred on the night.
For an album written in lockdown, unable to be played to Aussie fans since its release, its connection with fans tonight and its surprising uplift and warmth was once again a way Barnett and band manage to surprise at every live show.
Courtney continues her tour tonight (18 March) again playing Forumn Melbourne, before shows at Enmore Theatre (Sydney) 25 March and The Tivoli (Brisbane) 26 March as well as appearing at one-day festival Storyland (Coffs Harbour) 23 April.
