Courtney Barnett “Avant Gardener”

I want to apologize for the lazy posting over the weekend. I was busier than I had expected. My brain tends to get messy.

Speaking of messy brains, Courtney Barnett, from Melbourne, Australia, apparently has one too. She even wrote a song about it. “Avant- Gardener” is an autobiographical anecdote about her taking up gardening and attempting to revive her ambition only to be met with catastrophe.

She wakes up lazy on a Monday not wanting to do anything and describes it sarcastically, “It’s a Monday, it’s so mundane, what exciting things will happen today”. She decides that taking up gardening and growing vegetables would be a good idea. I always enjoyed her wordplay of this idea; “I wanna grow tomatoes on the front steps. Sunflowers, bean sprouts, sweet corn and radishes."

Things are going good. She’s feeling “proactive”. But suddenly she can’t breathe.

It’s not exactly clear why she all of a sudden is having trouble breathing. Some people speculate that it was an anxiety attack or maybe an allergic reaction.  Whatever it is it causes her to be eventually picked up by an ambulance and receive an adrenaline shot. “I feel like Uma Thurman post overdose and kickstart” she states, throwing props to Quentin Tarentino’s excellent film Pulp Fiction.
It’s a beachy and atmospheric song. The guitar solo in this thing is pretty hilarious too. Her lazy and low delivery of the lyrics paired with her Australian drawl parallels with the idea of not wanting to do much. It's all around just a languid, fun jam.