Watch the new Courtney Barnett video for “Elevator Operator” feat. Sleater-Kinney, Jeff Tweedy & more.
More About Courtney Barnett
The past few years have seen the meteoric rise of Courtney Barnett to the higher echelons of indie rock superstardom. If her debut LP Sometimes I Sit and Think, And Sometimes I Just Sit finally heralded the arrival of a truly unique and distinctive songwriting voice, everything that has taken place after has only confirmed it. For being nominated for a Best New Artist at the Grammy Awards, to appearing on TV shows such as Jimmy Fallon, Ellen, The Colbert Show and Conan and, recently, closing out the latest season of Saturday Night Live, Barnett has shown that following her own idiosyncratic path is the best, surefire path to success.
Courtney Barnett photo by Danny Clinch
[RELATED: watch more music video premieres from Performer Magazine.]
Now, in keeping with her deliciously skewed sense of humor, Barnett reveals her best video yet, for her new single “Elevator Operator”. Directed by Sunny Leunig (son of legendary Australian cartoonist Michael Leunig, who himself appears briefly in the video) and crammed with cameos from a raft of similarly off kilter, counterculture stars such as Sleater-Kinney, Magda Szubanski (“Kath & Kim”), Jeff Tweedy (Wilco), and musical Antipodean legends such as The Drones, Tim Rogers and Paul Kelly, it features Barnett as a harassed elevator operator encountering a series of strange, surreal characters before, just like the song itself, ending up on the rooftop of Melbourne’s Nicholas Building with her band, looking over the ledge for “perception and clarity”, imagining she’s “playing Sim City”. It is yet another potent reminder of what makes Courtney Barnett so inimitably Courtney Barnett – a gloriously odd and slyly humorous slice of life that only she can imbue with such wit and imagination.
Barnett will be returning to the US later this year to play the inaugural Sound On Sound festival in Austin as well as a show at the Ogden Theatre in Denver. These will be the last US shows for 2016.
UPCOMING COURTNEY BARNETT TOUR DATES7.8.16 – NOS Alive Festival – Lisbon, Portugal 7.9.16 – Bilbao BBK Live – Bilbao, Spain 7.10.16 – Musilac – Aix Les Bains, France 7.13.16 – Somerset House – London, United Kingdom 7.15.16 – Latitude Festival – Southwold, United Kingdown 7.17.16 – Longitude Festival – Dublin, Ireland 7.19.16 – Paleo Festival – Nyon, Switzerland 7.2216 – Fuji Rock Festival – Niigata, Japan 7.24.16 – Splendour In The Grass – Byron Bay, Australia 11.4.16 – Sound On Sound Fest – Mcdade, TX 11.8.16 – Ogden Theatre – Denver, CO 11.16.16 – Audio Club – Sao Paulo, Brazil 11.17.16 – Circo Voador – Rio De Janerio, Brazil |