Courtney Barnett Is Back With A Scorching Song About Harassment And Male Bullshit
She's back with a vengeance.
Courtney Barnett has just shared the first single from her anticipated second album, and it’s one almighty gut punch.
‘Nameless, Faceless’ is a classic Barnett bruiser, taking aim at online trolls and the daily harassment and abuse that women face on a daily basis. The lyrics are particularly pointed, such as this line in the chorus: “Men are scared that women will laugh at them…Women are scared that men will kill them.”
If that phrase sounds familiar, it’s because it’s been borrowed from The Handmaid’s Tale author Margaret Atwood. “I thought it was such an interesting sentence,” Barnett told triple j yesterday. “A really powerful way to say something so strong, I didn’t realise until I watched Handmaid’s Tale that Margaret Atwood had said it.”
The track is the first look at Barnett’s new album Tell Me How You Really Feel, the followup to her wildly successful debut Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit. The LP was written in bits and pieces over the last two years, around the same time she was writing and recording with Kurt Vile for their collaborative album Lotta Sea Lice.
“It just gave me a different burst of inspiration just working in a different place with different people and musicians we got working on that album,” Barnett said. “Different people work and different personalities, all those little things spark ideas.”
Tell Me How You Really Feel will hit shelves on May 18.