Jaw-droppingly stunning: This is what a national arts company should be doing

Résumé détaillé

There’s more grey hair out here now and more confidence on stage. It’s as if the stasis anxiety in Barnett’s songs is exorcised in the act of simply doing what she does.

It takes three songs for Courtney Barnett’s Melbourne return to feel like 2017. The comical near-death experience of Avant Gardener was already an Aussie suburban classic when she played this esteemed venue nine years ago and again, every seat becomes a hastily abandoned inconvenience.

What’s changed? A slow churn of albums mapping the agonies of indecision, procrastination and rumination has culminated in the aptly titled Creature of Habit. “Feels like I’m going backwards, each day I preach my practice,” she rants in the opening blast of Stay In Your Lane.

The backwards bit is an illusion. There’s more grey hair out here now and more confidence on stage. But Barnett’s three-piece grunge attack does feel as casually comfortable as her white jeans and T-shirt. It’s as if the stasis anxiety in her songs is exorcised in the act of simply doing what she does.

The bashful grin no longer tries to contain itself as she strolls to the lip of the stage to strangle those raggedly torn chords from her guitar. Our silence is “intimidating”; she squirms after the relative gentility of Mantis. But there’s very little of it as she interleaves ancient favourites with all 10 tracks from the new LP.

Early EP tracks History Eraser and Canned Tomatoes (Whole) must feel like another lifetime to the singer, but from here, the consistency of her craft is striking. The same thread of restless, poetic self-examination is carried by a familiar racket conjured by unfussy bassist Bones Sloane and drummer Stella Mozgawa.

Barnett gives herself and her overdriven guitar room to breathe in the slowed coda of City Looks Pretty and other improvised breakdowns, and the noise default is leavened by the likes of singalong favourite Depreston. The solo spell of Mostly Patient stills the beer-hoisting crowd like magic.

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