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Feb 15, 2018 Courtney Barnett By Christopher Roberts

Australian singer/songwriter/guitarist Courtney Barnett has announced a new album, Tell Me How You Really Feel, and shared its first single, “Nameless, Faceless,” via a video for the song. Tell Me How You Really Feel is due out May 18 via Mom + Pop/Marathon Artists/Milk! Records. She has also announced some tour dates. Below is the “Nameless, Faceless” video, followed by the album’s tracklist and cover art, as well as her tour dates.

“Nameless, Faceless” addresses the anonymity of online comments, users, and down-votes. Lucy Dyson directed the video, which mixes animation with photos of Barnett to illustrate the song’s point.

The chorus to “Nameless, Faceless” borrows from a famous Margaret Atwood quote. Here’s the chorus: “I want to walk through the park in the dark/Men are scared that women will laugh at them/I want to walk through the park in the dark/Women are scared that men will kill them/I hold my keys between my fingers.”

On Monday Barnett shared a new video that appeared to tease her new album. The two-and-a-half minute video featured Barnett in a room filled with different instruments, which she picked up to perform snippets of new songs. At the end the album title appeared on the screen (watch it below again). According to a press release, after that mysterious billboards for the album started to appear in major cities around the world. Select indie record stores worldwide then unexpectedly received vinyl copies of “Nameless, Faceless.”

The press release describes the album as such: “In Tell Me How You Really Feel, Barnett has revealed an exhilarating and unexpected shift. From its title (A question? An order?) to the unsettling cover image - a blood-red tinted self-portrait in uncomfortably tight close up - Barnett sets a different tone. There’s a new-found directness with this record, a muscularity to the instrumentation, a tenderness in her voice and a boldness to the lyrics. It speaks to Barnett entering a remarkable new phase of her musical evolution. She’s saying more, with less. Whereas once she examined the world through the prism of self-analysis, Tell Me How You Really Feel shifts that focus to those she interacts with - the good ones, the bad ones, the loved ones. Those she knows intimately and those who are strangers.”

Last year Barnett teamed up with American singer/songwriter/guitarist Kurt Vile for the collaborative album, Lotta Sea Lice, which came out in October via Matador. (It was one of our Top 100 Albums of 2017.)

Read our 2017 interview with Courtney Barnett and Kurt Vile on Lotta Sea Lice.

Barnett released her debut full-length album, Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit, via Mom + Pop in 2015 and it landed at #6 on Under the Radar‘s Top 100 Albums of 2015 list.

Also read our joint interview between Barnett and Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy, from our Best of 2015 issue.

Tell Me How You Really Feel Tracklist:

1. Hopefulessness
2. City Looks Pretty
3. Charity
4. Need a Little Time
5. Nameless, Faceless
6. I’m Not Your Mother, I’m Not Your Bitch
7. Crippling Self Doubt and a General Lack of Self-Confidence
8. Help Your Self
9. Walkin’ on Eggshells
10. Sunday Roast

Courtney Barnett Tour Dates:

5/6/18 - August Hall - San Francisco, CA
5/10/18 - The Sanctuary at Pico Union - Los Angeles, CA
5/14/18 - Saengerrunde - Austin, TX
5/16/18 - Union Transfer - Philadelphia, PA
5/19/18 - Music Hall of Williamsburg - Brooklyn, NY
5/21/18 - Chicago Cultural Center - Tiffany Dome - Chicago, IL

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