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Nov 11, 2021 Web Exclusive By Mark Moody

The cornucopia of pandemic-era recordings is beginning to produce a bumper crop. The past 18 months or so have been earmarked by rising anxieties, personal stresses, and a whole host of ideological differences. So what we might not have seen coming are a growing number of albums characterized by a forced stillness and time to rest and reflect. This should have been obvious given the number of artists that have been on a treadmill of producing records and endlessly touring in support of them. Particularly if your tours happen to start and end in Australia.

As the follow-up to Courtney Barnett’s pulse-pounding Tell Me How You Really Feel, she delivers her third solo album, Things Take Time, Take Time, through a sea of tranquility. Similar in tone to the simple reflections of Bob Dylan’s New Morning, Barnett opens up the album stating, “I drag a chair over to the window,” as if to have a front row quarantined seat to the goings on of her neighborhood. The laid-back toe-tapper “Rae Street” describes “next door kids run amok,” while the traipsing path of the following song, “Sunfair Sundown,” details a friend’s home remodel. Ho hum topics that result in sprightly songs that are far from humdrum.

A few songs drag a little, but even those have interesting flourishes. The bass-heavy “Turning Green” evolves into a tangle of guitars. And Barnett’s partner in crime here, Stella Mozgawa (Warpaint), brightens “Splendour” with a shower of sleigh bells. But primarily, Things Take Time, Take Time takes its spot in Barnett’s catalog to gently document a quiet period, released when things are starting to wind back up. Where else could you find a sentiment as sweet as that on the languid rave-up of “If I Don’t Hear From You Tonight,” where an unreachable lover is not automatically presumed to have perished in an automobile accident or out pursuing a torrid affair, but simply might have fallen asleep? The innocence of the pandemic at its finest. (www.courtneybarnett.com.au)

Author rating: 7.5/10