Song Exploder - Courtney Barnett - Depreston

Episode Date: July 25, 2018

Courtney Barnett released her debut album in March 2015. By the end of the year, she had been nominated for a Grammy for Best New Artist, Spin named her the Songwriter of the Year, and she won four ARIA Music Awards in her native Australia. In this episode, Courtney Barnett breaks down the song "Depreston," which began with a visit to an open house, on a house-hunting trip she took in the town of Preston.songexploder.net/courtney-barnett

You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs, and piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made. I'm Rishi Kesh Hirwe. Earlier this year, in May 2018, Courtney Barnett released her second album, Tell Me How You Really Feel. And last fall, she and Kurt Weill made an album together. So I thought this would be a good time to go back and listen to an episode she did in January 2016 about De Preston, my favorite song of hers from her first album.

Here it is. Courtney Barnett released her debut album in March 2015. By the end of the year, she had been nominated for a Grammy for Best New Artist, spin named her the songwriter of the year, and she had won four ARIA Music Awards in her native Australia. In this episode, Courtney Barnett breaks down her song to Preston, which began with a visit to an open house on a house-hunting trip she took in the town of Preston. Thanks to Sonos for letting me record this interview at the Sonos studio in Los Angeles.

My name is Courtney Barnett. I'm a songwriter from Melbourne in Australia. Preston is the suburbs of Melbourne trees and bigger backyards. So I went and looked at this house. I was house hunting and in the car ride home. The whole idea kind of came to me in that moment. It wasn't a song or an idea I'd been sitting on for a while. I had the idea in the car and then I went home. and was sitting around with my guitar and I'd just been trying to teach myself

this go-between song called Streets of Your Town and it's got this kind of riff in it and the riff for De Preston was kind of born out of playing around with those chords and those, that melody. I kind of just sat there at my desk and played it over and over and the words just kind of came straight to it.

I was kind of just dwelling over what it just happened in my head. We drive to a house in Preston. We see police arresting, a man with his hand in a bag. How's out for first impressions? This place seems depressing. It's a Californian bungalow in a cul-de-sac.

That kind of house-hunting experience, that kind of open home. I feel really intrusive a lot of the time going in, you're looking at all their stuff on the shelf. Like, you're supposed to be looking at the room size and the whatever, but I look at their record collection and what books they have on the shelf. So it feels kind of intrusive. I mean, you instantly paint a picture of the person who's there.

But this one was different because it was this lady who'd passed away. Some of her stuff was still in there. And it was this extra layer of intrusion. I guess that was the kind of catalyst and it opened up all these other thoughts and I instantly in my head I thought you know who was she and who was her family and just all those kind of little questions so it's not that you know the house was stunning or or anything like that it was just the kind of emotion that it pulled then I see the handrail in the shower a collection of those canisters for coffee tea and flower and a photo of a young man in a van in vienna The real estate lady showing us around just dropped that was a deceased estate and the family was trying to sell the house and move on. We were looking at the house as a property, not as someone's home and the kind of nostalgic memories that go with it. And then when she said the thing, you know, like you could just knock it down and build a bigger one or a better...

Not that it's disrespectful, but just that this place that someone's built, you know, means nothing. It's just a kind of physical thing that you could just, you know, wipe out and start again. She said that, so that instantly stuck in my head and it's such a kind of throwaway comment that has so much kind of built into it. Yeah. If you've got a spare half a million, you could knock it down and and start rebuilding. I could always hear a kind of group singing that refrain, kind of coming in one by one.

That was my idea. But when I actually did it, it didn't sound right. We deleted a couple of the other voices. It didn't feel right. It felt a bit too like, okay, right now let's sing the ending bit. Bit too cheery, bit too kind of Sesame Street. So I think we just kept it pretty simple.

Bones, the bass player, is the second voice. Sometimes I dwell on an spare half a million, you could knock it down and start rebuilding. Sometimes I dwell on an idea for ages and I kind of have the general story in my head, but the journey to the end of the story can sometimes take years to write. But this one, the words just kind of came out and the story kind of wrote itself. I had extra verses and it was just about cutting it

to tell the story in a perfect way. But then, even though it was quite easy to write, it was so hard to record. And I just couldn't get it sounding right, I think because it's so minimal and it's quite bare and vulnerable that everything just stuck out so strongly so yeah we tried to record it a couple of times

and I just threw them in the bin I was like no I've ruined the song I can't release that the secret in the end was we tried to keep it as live as possible to capture that I don't know it's kind of like you feel like you're tiptoeing around that song because it is so bare

we use brushes you know on the drum tried it lots of different ways and it's kind of too violent with sticks. This one doesn't have a chorus or it's only got two chords. So it doesn't really go anywhere, but I knew that it was done, you know? It didn't really feel like it needed that much. I guess the thing is, like, not every song needs a chorus or, you know, like there's no rules in songwriting.

And even if there was, I wouldn't know what they were. The guitar solo is kind of the only moment where, you know, something happens or it changes. Dan Luscom does the solo. He was one of the producers as well. He was so kind of in tune with the emotion of the song. His guitar playing really echoes it, you know, answers it truthfully. So that guitar solo is like, it's so emotional, I reckon. It's like weeping.

It's like a crying lady. The term to Preston, I mean. I always thought that that was funny. Like, that wasn't my invention. A couple of my friends said it, because I was, like, unemployed for a little while, and I had to go to Preston. I mean, to Preston once a week,

to do, like, job-seeking stuff. And it was a pretty dark time, you know, I didn't have any money, and I was pretty down on myself. And I had to get the train there, and my housemates were, like, you're going to Preston today. So it always kind of stuck in my mind, you know,

for that. It's not a bad place at all, but it has that kind of memory for me of that time specifically. But, you know, the geography is kind of irrelevant. This song's obviously kind of about looking for a house, but it's not really what it's about. I think it's just about mortality. You build this life, you work to make money,

to get a house to raise your family in and then you die. You know, like I said, I looked at the house, and I went home and then started writing the song. And then a couple of weeks later, I showed it to Jen, my girlfriend. And she was like, that house was in Coburg, not Preston. Because we'd looked at a couple of houses, and I got my houses muddled up. So it's not even about Preston. This song has a fade-out.

It feels like a really rare decision nowadays. Yeah, the fade-out, because it was such a kind of simple idea, I don't think I knew quite how to end it. did an ending that wasn't a fade, but I don't know, it just, it feels right, it feels like it kind of, it just disappears and gets smaller and smaller, and it kind of reflects the song itself, you know, like life goes on and on and on and just kind of fades out. Now, here's De Preston by Courtney Barnett in its entirety. You said we should look out further, I guess it wouldn't hurt us.

We don't have to be around all these coffee shops Now we got that percolator Never made a latte greater I'm saving $23 a week We drive to a house in Preston We see police arrested His hand in a bag

How's out for first impressions depressing it's a Californian bungalow in a cul-de-sac for two cars to parking or a lot of room for storage if you've just got one and it's going pretty cheap you say the deceased to stairs metal ceilings great and I see the handrail in the shower a collection of those canisters for coffee tea and flour and a photo of a young man in a van in Vietnam And I can't think of floorboards anymore Whether the front room faces south or north And I wonder what she bought it for

At songexploader.net for more information on Courtney Barnett Including links to buy this song I have a new album of my own coming out on April 24th It's been about 15 years since I last put out a full length And this is the first one that'll be out under my own name, Rishikesh, her way I started making Song Exploder when I was feeling lost in my own music career. And then for over a decade,

I've gotten to have these incredible conversations about the process of making music talking to other artists, and it made me completely rethink my relationship to music and my way of writing songs. And this album is the product of all of that. It features contributions from some of my favorite artists,

including some folks that you may have heard on this podcast, like Iron and Wine, Kevin Morby, Vagabond, Fenlily, and the producer Phil Wynrope. I'm going to be on tour, playing in cities across the U.S. starting in April, and I'm trying to bring the spirit of the podcast with me. So every show that I'm playing will begin with a conversation about the album

with a different amazing guest moderator in each city, like Adam Scott, Samin Nasrat, Jason Manzukas, Josh Molina, Minjin Lee, Ken Jennings, John Roderick, Austin Cleon, and more. They're all going to be my conversation partners on stage, and then I'll play with my band. The album is called In the Last Hour of Light, and the first couple songs are out now. You can listen to the music

and get tickets for the shows on my website, rishikesh.co, or just go to songexplor.net slash live. That's songexploder.net slash live. Thanks. If you heard about a sponsor in this episode, and you want to learn more, you can always go to songexploder.net slash sponsors to find all of the current offers available to song explodeer listeners.

This episode was produced by me, along with Christian Coons, The illustrations for Song Exploder are by Carlos Lerma. Song Exploder is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a collective of fiercely independent podcasts. You can learn about all of our shows at Radiotopia.fm. Let me know your thoughts on this episode. You can find Song Exploder on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at Song Exploder. My name is Rishi Keish Heirway.

Thanks for listening.