★★★★★
Courtney Barnett is fantastic because of who she is, when she is. Barnett writes the songs every aspiring songwriter wants to write. The mundane becomes exotic; the simplistic appears complex. The Double EP: A Sea of Split Peas combines Barnett's two EPs, both of which were released previously on her own Milk Records label.
The EPs are presented in reverse chronological order, perhaps with a view to illustrating where Barnett is now, rather than where she started...
- www.beat.com.au
2014-05-06
★★★★★
Melbourne-based indie singer-songwriter Courtney Barnett has a razor-sharp knack for detail in her lyrics and a heady brew of psych-rock, pop and melodic hooks to wash down all the droll wordplay. The international release of her double-EP compilation runs through idiosyncratic tales about an anaphylactic panic attack ("Avant Gardener") and acrid breakups ("Don't Apply Compression Gently") with the cleverness of an underground rapper and the soul of a country balladeer...
- filtermagazine.com
2014-05-01
★★★★★
Last year, Courtney Barnett's "Avant Gardener" not only introduced the world at large to this young Australian singer, it quickly became a late-summer slacker anthem featured on countless blogs and music-fan playlists. How could it not be? As Barnett marches her way through five minutes of hazy, witty storytelling, it's impossible not to revel in her attitude and infectious drawl ("life's gettin' hAhhd in here, so I do some gAAhhdening...
- us5.campaign-archive1.com
2014-04-18
★★★★★
Courtney Barnett's The Double EP: A Sea of Split Peas sounds at once timeless and the work of a definitively youthful songwriter. On the one hand, its blues-laced, dive bar rock--with its emphasis on mid-tempo grooves and simple chord progressions--dials things all the way back to electric Dylan and onward to the Band. On the other, the stoned observations and kush-glazed humor of her lyrics are coated in a sheen of twenty-something wonder by her clean, girlish vocals...
- cokemachineglow.com
2013-11-21
★★★★★
Lazily slouching out of a Melbourne bedsit, Courtney Barnett's two EPs (this year's 'How To Carve A Carrot Into A Rose' and 2012's 'I've Got a Friend Called Emily Ferris', collected here) establish the 25-year-old as a prodigiously talented songwriter. A voice like Sheryl Crow waking up the morning after her birthday just sweetens the deal...
- www.nme.com
2013-11-14
★★★★★
Although it's hard to offer up a novelty that's truly novel to a been-there, heard-that listening public these days, there's not much of a precedent for "Avant Gardener", the slice-of-life psych-folk number that's become the calling card for Aussie singer-songwriter Courtney Barnett. A little bit artsy and a little bit crunchy, as its name suggests, "Avant Gardener" is a free-form, free-associating trip, capturing an eventfully boring day in Barnett's so-called life that begins with her...
- www.popmatters.com
2013-11-14
★★★★★
Courtney Barnett makes jangly, rumpled indie-rock in the vein of Pavement or early Dylan: Wordy, wry, and anchored by the kind of poetic clarity you can only get from looking at the world askew. Peas collects EPs released in 2012 and 2013 -- an informal introduction to an artist who probably has more to offer...
- www.rollingstone.com
2013-11-13
★★★★★
On her recorded output to date, singer/songwriter Courtney Barnett has shaped an identity with too many edges to neatly define her. Confine her to handling only an acoustic guitar and she might naturally be grouped with folky forebears, but the two releases combined here for what will be her introduction to many suggest that the 25-year-old Australian is already well on her way toward further blurring any reference points...
- www.undertheradarmag.com
2013-10-25
★★★★★
This Australian artist's remarkable US debut of incisive slacker-pop combines two EPs, with the first six songs coming from her new EP How To Carve A Carrot Into A Rose and the following six from her 2012 debut EP I've Got A Friend Called Emily Ferris. Her refreshingly frank, smart and trenchant songwriting is filled with telling details and laced with dry humor, and it's accompanied by an expansive rock sound combining elements of psych-rock, garage, folk-rock and more. 10/18/2013
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- kexp.org
2013-10-19
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