More personal and forthright than its predecessor, Tell Me How You Really Feel relies less on its witty lyrics and more on improved songwriting that showcases a diverse set of rock instrumentation.
When reviewing albums, it can sometimes be difficult to decide exactly how much weight to assign lyrics. After all, some bands are just there to rock out and string together whatever phrases are necessary to achieve a good musical flow. Dance and electronic acts tend to be more about the beat than profundity as well, and I’ll fully admit to appreciating some albums where the words “my heart” and “baby” seem like half of the lyrical content.
Courtney Barnett is one of those musicians where this is never a question. From the moment her breakthrough single “Avant Gardener” gave us the line “the paramedic thinks I’m clever ‘cause I play guitar, I think she’s clever cause she stops people dying,” you knew her lyrics deserved your attention. Her 2015 debut Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit found itself on many of that year’s “best of” lists, largely thanks to her tactful wordplay, and she became seemingly inseparable from the word “witty.” A truly unique singer-songwriter, Barnett set the bar high early and experienced an exponential rise in fame in the span of a couple years. Yet as the song “Pedestrian at Best” cautioned: “put me on a pedestal and I’ll only disappoint you.”
Tell Me How You Really Feel is a noticeably different album by very much the same Courtney Barnett. More personal and forthright than its predecessor, Barnett points her observational wordsmithing at herself in an exercise of self-reflection. There’s less novelty this time around, and the lyrics may not be as immediately gripping, but improved overall songwriting combined with tracks that showcase a diverse set of rock instrumentation certainly makes up for this lack.
Going into Tell Me How You Really Feel expecting a lyrical sequel to Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometime I Just Sit will leave you disappointed. There’s no sign of Oliver Paul, the aspiring elevator operator. Barnett doesn’t spend any time ruminating on how produce is shipped. There are no anecdotes about how attempting to impress someone by lap swimming could go awry.
Instead, you get a larger dose of the singer who declared “my internal monologue is saturated analog, it’s scratched and drifting” and “I want to go out but I wanna stay home.” How much larger? For starters, there’s a track called “Crippling Self Doubt and a General Lack of Self Confidence.” Here, before Barnett enters into a chorus of “I don’t know anything/I don’t owe anything,” a snarky voice remarks “tell me how you really feel.” For someone known for blunt, neurotic verses, Barnett certainly has her album titles down pat.
This same side of Barnett opens the album with “Hopefulessness,” an aptly-named slow burner that goes between self-directed put-downs like “your vulnerability, stronger than it seems” and assurances like “you know it’s okay to have a bad day.” On “Charity,” it’s hard to tell if Barnett is criticizing herself or someone else when she remarks “you don’t have to pretend you’re not scared” and “I bet you got a lot to prove, I know you’re still the same.” The album is full of conflicting internal monologues like these, and on “Walkin’ on Eggshells” her own knack for self-expression is torn between “say what you want” and “I don’t wanna hurt your feelings, so I say nothing.” This second-guessing adds a layer of irony to an album named Tell Me How You Really Feel, but all signs point to hesitancy being an integral part of what goes on in Barnett’s head.
If you think that it must be a strange feeling for someone so self-conscious to suddenly be so lauded, well, you’re correct. Barnett dealt with this feeling before on “Pedestrian at Best” on her previous album, but Tell Me How You Really Feel expands more into the familiarity gap between celebrities and their fans. “Need a Little Time” opens with “I don’t know a lot about you, but you seem to know a lot about me,” which sums up how weird it must be to be an object of adoration for so many. Similarly, “City Looks Pretty” includes the line “friends treat you like a stranger, and strangers treat you like a best friend,” indicating the pros and cons of regularly touring.
These confessions of insecurity are well-trod terrain for Barnett, and their frequency occasionally approaches “shtick” territory on Tell Me How You Really Feel. However, she does show off an intriguing new side on this album: her angry one. “Nameless, Faceless,” is Barnett’s response to internet trolls and feeling threatened as a woman in general. The song’s sentiment is the faux-sympathetic question “who hurt you?,” as she tells her unreasonably angry detractors “I’m really sorry ‘bout whatever happened to you.” More intense is “I’m Not Your Mother, I’m Not Your Bitch,” which is the biggest left-turn on the album. Barnett actually sounds pissed off when she shouts “it’s all the same, never change,” and it’s fairly intimidating to hear her mockingly ask “d-did I stutter?”
Tell Me How You Really Feel isn’t all despondence and anger either, as there is a lighter side toward the end of the album. On “Help Your Self,” Barnett concedes “darkness depends on where you’re standing,” assuring herself without the self-doubt of other tracks. To contrast the bummer feeling of opener “Hopefulessness,” “Sunday Roast” closes the album on an upbeat note as a relatively straightforward love song. While the album’s lyrics are more centered on emotions than wit this time around, and are therefore less likely to send you to genius.com to make sure you got every verse, they do showcase a broader range of feelings than anything she’s done before.
With so much focus on Barnett’s lyricism, which is understandable, it can be easy to miss the fact that the songs on Tell Me How You Really Feel seem so much more complex. Grunge noticeably permeates certain spots on the album, most notably “Hopefulessness” and “I’m Not Your Mother, I’m Not Your Bitch.” The former recalls the low-note guitar droning of Nirvana’s “Come As You Are,” the latter has the intensity of “Lithium.” “City Looks Pretty,” starts with some simple Wilco-like chords, but completely changes its tempo halfway through to resemble more of a stadium rocker. “Charity” meanwhile might be the most straightforward song she’s released to date, which is not meant at all as a criticism. With clearly-defined choruses and verses, along with one of Barnett’s better vocal performances, it’s a dark horse standout from the album. From the guitar solo on “Need a Little Time” to the pop touches on the chorus of “Crippling Self Doubt and a General Lack of Self Confidence,” Tell Me How You Really Feel really ups the ante on what to expect from Barnett’s songwriting and instrumentation.
Just like on her previous albums, Tell Me How You Really Feel is an album that takes some time to fully appreciate and comprehend. There may not be anything as lyrically amusing as her previous narratives, nor anything as emotionally compelling as “Depreston” from Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit, but you do see a much fuller view of Barnett’s personality, and are treated to the same candid lyricism. It’s also easier to notice a stronger focus on the non-lyrical parts of composition this time around, whereas previously this was more an afterthought. If you worry that this direction represents a move towards her becoming a more conventional rock singer-songwriter, one who sings banal songs with standard structures over some guitar chords, rest assured that Courtney Barnett remains one of the most unique musicians out there right now. The world may have put her on a pedestal, but she honestly has yet to disappoint.
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