During what was arguably one of Thursday’s best sets, Australian singer-songwriter Courtney Barnett powered through her first ever Bonnaroo performance. The 26-year-old singer took the stage at This Tent around 11 pm and led fans new and old through a high-energy, 45 minute set, managing to get a notoriously motionless first night crowd to jump up and down and throw their hands in the air. Barnett and band – who she endured received just appreciation from the crowd during multiple breaks for applause – sounded impressively full for a three piece, with Barnett’s left handed black telecaster sounding sludgy as ever.
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Barnett kicked off the evening with “Lance Jr.,” an older track that quietly nods to the Dandy Warhols’ “Lance,” before head banging her way through the musical interludes in “Elevator Operator,” a track from her latest record Sometimes I Sit And Think, And Sometimes I Just Sit, which dropped earlier this year.
Nearing the end of the set, Barnett delivered an anthemic performance “Depreston,” a track the singer introduced as “a song about finding a house, and about dying.” In the song, the narrator tours an estate and finds herself unable to separate the home from the recently deceased: “Aren’t the pressed metal ceilings great? Then I see the handrail in the shower/a collection of those canisters for coffee, tea and flour/and a photo of a young man in Vietnam/and I can’t think of floorboards anymore.” After finishing the song, Barnett took a moment to appreciate her view. “I’m not gonna lie, that was a pretty beautiful moment,” said the Melbourne-based singer before cranking the energy back up and kicking into singalong track “Avant Gardner,” one of her most clever tracks, during which she comments on the kind of warped (though, in her case, well-deserved) musician idolatry evident during her set: “The paramedic thinks I’m clever cause I play guitar/I think she’s clever cause she stops people dying.” She followed the older single with a newer one, playing crowd favorite “Pedestrian at Best,” easily her best and liveliest performance of the night.
Barnett ended her all-too-short set with “History Eraser,” one of the bigger songs off of 2014’s The Double EP: A Sea Of Split Peas. Out of all of Barnett’s spoken word-like jammers, “History Eraser” is possibly the most poetic, a stream of consciousness style piece on paper that hits like a melodic performance from a poetry slam, equipped with a dark, catchy one-line hook: “In my brain I rearrange the letters on the page to spell your name.”
If you missed Barnett this year, never fear: after last night’s set, the singer will undoubtedly be back, though it wouldn’t be surprising if she graduates from the tents and finds herself headlining one of the main stages in years to come.
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