Photo: Melissa Miller
Courtney Barnett - Pabst Theater 2022
Courtney Barnett
Courtney Barnett and her band played to a masked audience Thursday at the Pabst Theater. The Australian artist is touring in support of her new album Things Take Time, Take Time; she drew songs from it as well as material ranging from her debut EP to her collaboration with Kurt Vile.
The chronicler in Barnett set the scene early with “Rae Street,” warning “time is money and money is no man’s friend.” By the time the band hit its stride with “Avant Gardener,” Barnett’s ode to self-distrust, she took the powerful sound mix up a notch with a concise, face-melting guitar solo.
With her supple band, Stella Mozgawa, co-producer of new album on keys and drum pad; Dave Mudie on drums—who was serenaded by the audience for his birthday—and bassist Bones Sloane, Barnett was free to roam the stage and control the mood.
With her dedicated fan base dancing in aisles and singing along, Barnett was backlit by strobes. She has rock and roll presence. In silhouette, her head back and hair flying with her amplifiers roaring, Barnett might be the prototype rock deity from anytime in the last 50 years.
But this is her time. Barnett just happens to have arrived at a point in history when society is shifting and the music industry, as it once was, is running for its life. She points backward and forward at the same time—drawing on legitimate forebears while walking the walk of a role model for a younger generation.
Barnett’s old soul lyrical honesty cuts to the bone and her frenetic stream-of-consciousness delivery add urgency. The driving melodies and relentless rhythms sound fresh.
Midway into the set, the southpaw guitarist strangled her Fender Jaguar, walking out on a wire with a solo that would make Karl Wallenda proud. Blasting into the land of sheer noise and then casually yinning the yang with a ballad. The band followed, especially Mudie, whose parts ran from big drums and splashy cymbals to relentless floor toms to next-to nothing time keeping. Mozgawa electronic drums and samples added subtle orchestrations.
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Wise-beyond-her-years, Barnett resigned, “stars in the sky are gonna die. Eventually, it’s fine.” Yet for the final encore number she insistently reminded, “Before you gotta go, go, go, go; I wanted you to know, know, know, know; You’re always on my mind.”
Opening act Cassandra Jenkins played a set that began with her playing acoustic guitar while strumming the strings of an electric guitar on a stand to set up a wash of sound for texture. “Last time I saw you, I was wearing the same dress … These are things you could have never foreseen,” Jenkins sang wearing a long white formal dress. With the headliner’s gear covered in black sheets the effect was of the Pabst as a gothic mansion whose family had left the place to ghosts.
The two-edged sword of her tune “Michelangelo” warned “You’re a virus and you come back at the first sign of weakness. I’m building up a resistance.” Jenkins’ closing number,”"Hard Drive (Security Guard),” was built around spoken conversation where the title changes meaning, from the mind as a hard drive to a new motorist navigating a hard drive. The creative observational piece recalled T Bone Burnett. Laurie Anderson and Robert Earl Keen’s quirky “Gravitational Forces.”
