It can be frustrating when a hotly tipped artist’s debut arrives and you are left scratching your ahead about what exactly all the fuss is about. (I grant you that it’s something of a first world problem.) However Courtney Barnett’s debut album Sometimes I Sit And Th

ink And Sometimes I Just Sit is out next week and to these ears it’s absolutely brilliant. Yes, there are hints of a lot of cool tars from the past forty or so years (Kim Gordon, Patti Smith, PJ Harvey, Kim Deal in her many guises to name but a few) but there is something that is distinctly her. This is an extremely strong debut album, which I am willing to bet will appear in the end of year lists, and hopefully those filled in by the punters not just those filed by the critics.

She has made i

t available to stream in its entirety a week before its release (March 23 in the UK), so take the time to listen to it, and play it loud.

And if you enjoy that – and I hope you will – check out her two earlier EPs, which were released together The Double EP: A Sea Of Split Peas which show that the critics who praised it then were definitely right.

Read more at http://www.nme.com/news/courtney-barnett/83564#0txOCM2A7Hr8tl1G.99as

One of the most antic

ipated debut albums of this year is Courtney Barnett’s wonderfully ti

tled Sometimes I Sit And Think, And Sometimes I Just Sit. Two very different tracks have been previewed from the Australian’s album, which you can watch below.

‘Pedestrian At Best’

has a weird and wonderful video, and the song grabs you and thrills in a way I recall when I first heard The Breeders’ ‘Cannonball’ all those years ago…

Meanwhile, ‘Depreston’ is an altogether different (but just as good) kettle of fish:

The tracklisting for the album is as follows:

1. Elevator Operator
2. Pedestrian at Best
3. An Illustration of Loneliness (Sleepless in NY)
4. Small Poppies
5. Depreston
6. Aqua Profunda!
7. Dead Fox
8. Nobody Really Cares if You Don’t Go to the Party
9. Debbie Downer
10. Kim

‘s Caravan
11. Boxing Day Blues

I

may have been late to the party, but if you are too, then check out her earlier track ‘Avant Gardener’

with what I believe may well be the world’s first kooky tennis music video.