Courtney Barnett

Courtney Barnett is a singer-songwriter who first made a name for herself as a guitarist in the Melbourne scene before she started recording her own work in her trio. She broke out with her first album, sometimes I sit... in 2016, which channelled quite a bit of the '90s grunge sound, though with a welcome sense of self-awareness, humor, and a much lighter touch, mixed in with some folksy ballads for good measure. She took her foot off the gas pedal a bit in her subsequent albums in terms of intensity and shifted closer to a looser, more melodic set of songs. Her joint album with Kurt Vile, which came out between her first and second albums was practically a mind meld between the two artists. She is a gifted songwriter who has a knack for picking infectious tunes from the ether with quite an ease and combining them with lots of whimsy observations on everyday things and lots of people-watching.