Courtney Barnett’s three solo albums have been slathered with awards in her homeland of Australia and graced charts internationally. Her 2015 debut was nominated for a Grammy, and her 2017 collaboration with US singer Kurt Vile landed on many album-of-the-year lists.Fender – which spotlights artists using their instruments in their video session series – invited her to take a break from working on her next album to shoot an episode.
She chose to reinterpreting two tracks from her 2021 album Things Take Time, Take Time. “It was fun to choose polar opposites,” Barnett says of the songs Turning Green and Before You Gotta Go. “One is really bandy and jammy and the other is a lot more timid, fingerpicky and small.
”She adds: “I might not play the same thing live as I would in the studio, because it just needs more of something. Simplifying things in the studio sometimes works better. It comes through stronger.
”Turning Green, in particular, is a different animal. “We spent a while picking it apart and putting it back together. The album version is drums and organ and the bassline is driving it.
The guitar doesn’t even come in until the end. Live, it just needed a bit more energy.“I started creating that kind of ambient sound, just swells and little stabs here and there.
Because the organ isn’t there when we play as a three-piece, it’s just substituting instruments and filling some of those spaces. I love the album version – but I’ve really come to lov.