Cutting her teeth on the bustling streets of Melbourne, it was her warm, honeyed folkiness and labyrinthine poetry that gave Courtney Barnett her most ardent supporters. Becoming an international indie-rock stalwart seemingly overnight, she cranked up the energy for her summery debut full-length, Sometimes I Sit And Think, And Sometimes I Just Sit (2015), and sank farther into the rabbithole of grungy, punky grit on its follow-up, Tell Me How You Really Feel (2018). But for her third solo album, Things Take Time, Take Time, the story-centric singer-songwriter has, in a sense, returned to her roots.
It wasn’t entirely intentional, either. When Barnett was starting out, she was bound to the volumetric constraints of sharehouses and flats, writing gentler songs on acoustic guitars to avoid complaints from her neighbours. It made sense to beef up the sonics for her first two albums, then,
