Album Review: Courtney Barnett & Kurt Vile - Lotta Sea Lice

10 October 2017 | 3:18 pm | Ross Clelland

"... It seems to have worked so easily. Or maybe it takes real effort for something to sound this casually throwaway."

While accepting Courtney Barnett's and Kurt Vile's styles would complement each other, it seems to have worked so easily. Or maybe it takes real effort for something to sound this casually throwaway.

The seemingly offhand but insightful observations of both are present. By turns they're wry, resigned, occasionally surreal. It's not just their two laconic voices, there's also their idiosyncratic guitar playing: off-kilter strummy one moment, wiry-loud verging on grungy the next. That plays off against little flourishes like Let It Go's limping martial drums.

The subject matter is often snapshots of relationships in trouble, or maybe just tired - Over Everything is a morning conversation at cross purposes from opposite ends of the house, although Continental Breakfast is a happier ramble on the nature of friendship, existence, cereal, and stuff.

Things get mixed up: Outta The Woodwork is recycled from one of Barnett's early EPs, but giving Vile the lead skews the tentative age-difference doubts of it a different way, while final track Untogether muddies the gender roles as they sing about that girl who kept insisting "to touch my face", and that frog 'prince' you probably shouldn't have kissed.

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It's a record just full of ragged charms.