By Maya Santow<\/p>\n
On Monday, September 12th, Australian indie rock performer Courtney Barnett took to the House of Blues stage with opener We Don\u2019t Ride Llamas. The show drew a mixed crowd, and for good reason\u2013 Barnett\u2019s discography, strung together by her ever-present witty lyricism, ranges from a grittier rock sound in her earlier tracks to the more mellow pace of her most recent album, \u201cThings Take Time, Take Time\u201d (2021). This\u00a0 brought together older \u201cdad rock\u201d enjoyers and young indie music fans alike for a collectively unforgettable experience.<\/span><\/p>\n We Don\u2019t Ride Llamas, an LA-based band of siblings whose style is a unique blend of pop-punk and R&B, kicked off the evening with a bang. Riling up a crowd on a Monday night is no small task, but We Don\u2019t Ride Llamas was up to the challenge. From the slow, dreamy sweetness of \u201cBlueberries\u201d to the more indie rock sound of \u201cVenus & Mars,\u201d they owned the stage with grace, passion, and (dare I say) incredible punk-style outfits. At the end of their set, the room was not only abuzz with anticipation for Courtney Barnett, but also with the excitement of discovering a new possible favorite band in We Don\u2019t Ride Llamas.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Barnett opened her set with \u201cRae Street,\u201d one of her many songs in which she manages to make the ordinary\u2013 daily happenings outside of her window\u2013 extraordinary. Her band, composed of drummer Dave Mudie and bass player Bones Sloane, remained on a raised portion of the stage, bobbing their shaggy haircuts that were almost comically similar to Barnett\u2019s. Barnett, expertly managing not only vocals, but also rhythm and lead guitar as well, would often join them upstage to jam at the end of each song. Her closeness with her bandmates was apparent; viewing it felt like being let in on something special and intimate.<\/span><\/p>\n As she made her way through the high-energy \u201cCity Looks Pretty\u201d (my personal favorite) and fan-favorite \u201cElevator Operator,\u201d one thing that could not go unnoticed about Barnett as a performer was her sheer endurance. Barnett seems to have a boundless energy that only genuine rockstars can truly possess. She wasted no time onstage\u2013 aside from the occasional humble \u201cthank you,\u201d between tracks, Barnett hurtled from song to song, absolutely throwing her entire being into each and every one. Some of my snapshots from the night include her raising her guitar high above her head, leaning over it like a crutch, and holding it out in front of her as an offering for the audience\u2013 the guitar almost an extension of her body.<\/span><\/p>\n That\u2019s not to say that the show didn\u2019t have its slower moments\u2013 in fact, I would argue that these moments were expertly scattered throughout the performance and made it all the more powerful. Barnett\u2019s signature exploration of the mundane through her simple, yet clever lyricism in \u201cDepreston\u201d seemed to hit home at just the right moment for my neighbors in the audience whom I had spoken with before the show\u2013 the three college freshmen from California held one another and shed a few tears at the lyric \u201cit\u2019s a California bungalow in a cul-de-sac.\u201d A tangible sort of magic filled the room during the same song, when the audience joined Barnett in a round of the final line: \u201cIf you\u2019ve got a spare half a million, you can knock it down and start rebuilding.\u201d Barnett\u2019s final song of the evening was on the slower side as well: after a full 16-song set and being ushered back onstage for an encore, Barnett played the self-reflective, vulnerable \u201cBefore You Gotta Go,\u201d titled rather fittingly to finish off the night.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n If you have never heard of Courtney Barnett before, or have never seen her live, I could not recommend an artist more. If her magnetic, passionate stage presence isn\u2019t enough to convince you, or if you\u2019re waiting for the next time she comes to Boston, I would implore you to give her music a listen. Barnett\u2019s lyricism\u2013 incredibly honest, oftentimes funny, and consistently clever\u2013 is a voice that I think that a lot of us, particularly those of us in college, need to hear. Although Barnett herself is 34, the angsty, indie-rock edge in her music is incredibly fitting for this coming-of-age stage of life, while her lyrics tie together refreshing humor, wisdom, and a beautifully encouraging wonder at the small details of daily existence that can be lost on us. To have seen her live this past week was an incredible experience that I can only hope other WTBU listeners will get to have as well.<\/span><\/p>\n In her song, \u201cAvant Gardener,\u201d Barnett sings, \u201cIt\u2019s a Monday, it\u2019s so mundane.\u201d However, thanks to Barnett herself, I can confidently say that this past Monday at the House of Blues was truly anything but.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Maya Santow On Monday, September 12th, Australian indie rock performer Courtney Barnett took to the House of Blues stage with opener We Don\u2019t Ride Llamas. The show drew a mixed crowd, and for good reason\u2013 Barnett\u2019s discography, strung together by her ever-present witty lyricism, ranges from a grittier rock sound in her earlier tracks […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20669,"featured_media":32814,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1525,1523,15],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32813"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20669"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32813"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32813\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32816,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32813\/revisions\/32816"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32814"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}