Courtney Barnett: Sometimes I Sit & Think, & Sometimes I Just Sit [MOM+POP]

Why you'll love it

This Mom + Pop North American edition comes with a download card. The album scored 88 on Metacritic, earned Pitchfork's Best New Music, and helped land Barnett a Grammy nomination for Best New Artist.

This edition

• Download card included
• Mom + Pop North American edition

About the album

The title came from a poster in Courtney Barnett's grandmother's bathroom, which is fitting, because Grandma had already bankrolled the career. Barnett borrowed money from her to start her own label, Milk! Records, put out her first EP on it, and built enough of a following through two EPs that her first full album arrived with a fair bit riding on it.

She spent a year writing the songs, then showed them to her band just a week before recording to keep everything fresh, and they cut most of it in eight days at Head Gap Studio in Preston, Victoria, in April 2014. "Pedestrian at Best" was finished so late that the take on the record is the first time she sang the words out loud. "Elevator Operator" opens with a character sketch set on top of a building, "Dead Fox" turns a road trip into a riff, "Nobody Really Cares If You Don't Go to the Party" is a social anxiety anthem with a big chorus, and "Kim's Caravan" stretches out into slow-burning guitar. Burke Reid and Dan Luscombe co-produced with her.

AllMusic called it invigorating proof that rock doesn't need reinventing to come back to life. And "Depreston" remains the gentlest song ever written about house hunting in a Melbourne suburb; Toronto buyers will find the prices rather quaint.

Also at Kops: more Courtney Barnett on vinyl · browse Alternative

Tracklist

Listen

On Mom + Pop / Marathon Artists / Milk! Records (cat# MP221-1), the 2015 album.