Nameless, Faceless - Courtney Barnett

Courtney Barnett, the leader of the new school of rock, is back! Okay okay, so she had collaborated with Kurt Vile on Lotta Sea Lice in 2017, but this is purely Courtney Barnett as her upcoming album, which "Nameless, Faceless" is featured on, Tell Me How You Really Feel, is due to release on May 18th of this year, and that is super exciting. Barnett's, previous album Sometimes I Sit and Think and Sometimes I Just Sit, was freaking sweet. Her ability to combine the singer-songwriter thing with core rock elements, to create jams with intricate and narrative-style lyrics that explored complex and worldly themes like cognitive dissonance or feeling unfulfilled were intertwined in stories like, a person wanting to be an elevator operator. The album was something unique in a boring phase of rock music, but was still able to be wildly entertaining, which is a pretty good mix if you ask me. However, it seems all the tricks up Courtney Barnett's sleeve have yet to be played, as"Nameless, Faceless" if any indication for what Tell Me How You Really Feel, offers an even more nuanced approach to the style that Courtney Barnett has already created.

Basically, this song is a huge "fuck you" to those who post negative comments or have outspokenly criticized any of Courtney Barnett's works, safely behind the computer screen thus the title, "Nameless, Faceless." Why someone would think any of Courtney Barnett's songs are worth disparaging is pretty odd to me, but I suppose there has been a decent amount of hate ("You sit all alone at home in the darkness/With all the pent-up rage that you harness") to catch her attention. There are not a lot of anger-driven or even direct songs in Courtney Barnett's history ("Pedestrian at Best" being the closest instance), so it appears something new has crawled into our headphones. Lyrics such as "Don't you have anything better to do," "He said "I can eat a bowl of alphabet soup/And spit out words better than you," "He said, she said/Nameless, faceless" reiterates the trolls she has had to deal with. Although, the song is based on frustrations, and I suppose enough occurrences, she calmly and cooly, as is common in the majority of her songs with the the soft cadence of her vocals, shrugs it off and sings verses such as, "I'm real sorry/'Bout whatever happened to you," "Must be lonely/Being angry/Feeling over-looked."

However, in the chorus and final verses of the song, I think Courtney Barnett lets off a little steam as the slightly distorted vocals, and descending chords illicit a sense of breaking from an overbearing nuisance. The lyrics, while evoking a feminist dichotomy of the differentiation of abuse ("Men are scared of women who laugh at them...Women are scared that men will kill them"), are about the trolls commenting on the music and their videos of artists while they "walk through the park in the dark," the dark acting as the internet. The last two verses of the chorus "I hold my keys/Between my fingers" I think are the true nature of the song as Courtney Barnett waiting for the trolls to come when she "walk[s] through the park in the dark," so she can kick the shit out of them. The final verses of the song emphasizes the shit-kicking that is to come with some aggressive vocals as she begs for someone to fuck with her "Go on tell me/You're just kidding." I wouldn't test her folks.

The "Nameless, faceless" are going to get it, and such a single with an honest and frustrating theme functions so well to represent an album called Tell Me How You Really Feel. Not to forget, the accompanying music video is so great, in showing the frustrated mind of Courtney Barnett; cats, trolls, keys and the rest. It has a "Take me Out" visual in the collage-esque nature of representation that I think is worth the watch as a better way to understand the song, and because it's edited so entertainingly. 

I encourage all of you to check out Tell Me How You Really Feel as soon as it comes out, I mean the literal second, because it's fucking Courtney Barnett and it's going to be fucking awesome.