#bones sloane

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Everybody Here Hates You by Courtney Barnett from her EP - Director: Danny Cohen

[freakoutgirl]

Dave Mudie, Bones Sloane, and Courtney Barnett (photo by Pooneh Ghana, via Courtney’s Instagram)

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Nameless, Faceless by Courtney Barnett from the album Tell Me How You Really Feel - Music video directed and animated by Lucy Dyson

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Analysis Paralysis by Jen Cloher from the album Jen Cloher

[thebowerypresents]

Saturday Night’s Alright for Rocking

Courtney Barnett – Kings Theatre – May 9, 2026

Wasn’t that long ago that you’d hear people say, “Rock is dead.” There were even think pieces written on the subject. You don’t hear it that much anymore and, really, how could anyone say such a thing while Courtney Barnett is out there releasing new albums and fully rocking sold-out shows like she did at Kings Theatre on Saturday night. Fronting a trio of Bones Sloane on bass and Stella Mozgawa on drums and decked out in a chic white suit, Barnett had the venue reverberating the entire no-frills 75-minute set.

The opening four songs set the tone for the entire night, Barnett drawing from four of her albums: “Stay in Your Lane” — the opener off her just-released Creature of Habit — “City Looks Pretty” — from 2018’s Tell Me How You Really Feel — “Avant Gardner” — off 2013’s A Sea of Split Peas double EP — and “Small Poppies” — from 2015’s Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit. The songs flowed more or less one into the next, Mozgawa’s drums driving the opener, Sloane’s bass guiding a narcotic blues on “Poppies” and Barnett’s guitar wailing throughout.

As she worked in the newer songs with the old, it was clear that while her songwriting viewpoint has matured, it’s still the same Courtney Barnett. The one singing, “I wonder / What you way when I’m not around” in “Wonder” (Creature of Habit) is the same person whose mind went wandering while house hunting in “Depreston.” 

Hearing the songs of her in-progress career strung together in a nonstop live set, it’s clear that her appeal and magic come from the juxtaposition of her quiet, lyrical insecurity and loud, confident rock-and-rolling, it’s a naked honesty running both ways. And so, the show ended appropriately with “Pedestrian at Best” (Sometimes I Sit …), Barnett screaming, “Put me on a pedestal and I’ll only disappoint you,” taking another guitar solo from the edge of the stage, and the trio playing their brashest room-rattling of the night, rock and roll very much alive. —A. Stein | @Neddyo

Photos courtesy of Silvia Saponaro | @silvia_saponaro

@silvialovesmusic

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Need A Little Time by Courtney Barnett from the album Tell Me How You Really Feel - Director: Danny Cohen

[thebowerypresents]

Photos courtesy of Silvia Saponaro | www.saponarophotography.com @silvialovesmusic

(Courtney Barnett plays Celebrate Brooklyn at the Prospect Park Bandshell on 7/25.)

Courtney Barnett – Music Hall of Williamsburg – May 19, 2018

Usually if someone were to say, “So-and-so is the coolest,” I’d reply that that, well, that was a totally subjective statement. But hearing “Courtney Barnett is the coolest” felt like an incontrovertible fact after watching her set on Saturday night at Music Hall of Williamsburg. With her second full-length album, Tell Me How You Really Feel, out for public consumption for barely 24 hours, Barnett and her band ran straight through the new record. While this meant opening a sold-out show in a room much too small to contain a ready-to-rock adoring audience with a slow and moody song called “Hopefulessness,” it was no matter. The crowd hung on every word, gesture and riff from the opening notes, the brand-new release with its only–Courtney Barnett lyrics about how the “darkness depends on where you’re standing” and eating a bowl of alphabet soup and spitting out better words than you. Her updated grunge had just the right balance of nostalgia and newness to satisfy everyone in the room.

As all-in as everyone was with the new stuff for what was effectively a one-off album-release gig, the mood in the room palpably shifted as the final track, the poignant “Sunday Roast,” came to a close and the second half of the show kicked into gear. Running through a string of oh-I-love-this-song! hits, sandwiched by “Avant Gardener” and “History Eraser” the band—the usual trio expanded into a four-piece with bassist Bones Sloane and drummer Dave Mudie joined by Katie Harkin on keys and second guitar—fed off the crowd’s bounding energy and vice versa. You could practically hear the collective audience mutter, “Well, I’ve been seeing Courtney Barnett since …” when she still had them rapt with every word of “Depreston,” a song she played in a something-new-I’m-working-on form in the same not-quite-as-full room not too many years ago.

Whether unfurling her characteristic poetic couplets or thrashing her guitar and leading her band through a blast of damn-that’s-good rock, Barnett was, undeniably, the coolest person in the room. When the set came to a close, the crowd response was somewhere between “One more song!” and “Courtney, I’ll follow you anywhere!” She met everyone halfway, playing three songs, including the back-catalog “Anonymous Club” and two pleasers off her 2015 release, Sometimes I Sit and Think and Sometimes I Just Sit. The show ended with “Nobody Really Cares if You Don’t Go to the Party,” Barnett singing, “Yes, I like hearing your stories/ But I’ve heard them all before,” while the audience danced and sang along, perfectly content to hear any stories Barnett had to tell one more time. —A. Stein | @Neddyo

@neddyo

[courtkneebaanet]

milkrecords the Cbs in Japan (photo @rollingstonejapan ) #courtneybarnett