Tell Me How You Really Feel

AlbumMay 18 / 201810 songs, 37m 20s
Indie Rock Singer-Songwriter
Popular Highly Rated
1181

7.4 / 10

Courtney Barnett’s second album is smaller, more introverted than her debut. It’s tentative but with a purpose, songs about what it means to not have—or need—the right words for everything.

F

Courtney Barnett’s debut full-length, 2015’s Sometimes I Sit And Think, And Sometimes I Just Sit, established the Australian indie-rocker as a potent musical force. With its tumbling guitars, ragged vocals, and grunge-punk tones—all of which coalesced on the scorching, sassy “Pedestrian At Best”—the album exceeded the…

6 / 10

8 / 10

On album two, Courtney Barnett offers no easy answers, but reassurance and beauty aplenty

Indie-rock singer-songwriter Courtney Barnett mixes penetrating observation, wry humor and deep empathy on a modest masterpiece of an LP

Lyrically the most direct and honest Courtney has been to date.

Courtney Barnett uses her garage rock to explore anxiety and depression, Slow Club’s Charles Watson heads to Spacebomb Studios for his first solo record, while Parquet Courts release their best album yet 

Courtney Barnett specializes in miniatures, which is why her 2015 debut, Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit, was such a wonder: with barbed words and gnarled guitars, she made everyday minutiae seem compelling.

There's no sign of a sophomore slump on Courtney Barnett's new album, Tell Me How You Really Feel.

8 / 10

Gliding effortlessly over the sophomore slump with Tell Me How You Really Feel, Courtney Barnett's (solo) followup to Sometimes I Sit and Th...

Anyone expecting Barnett’s latest, Tell Me How You Really Feel, to be Sometimes I Sit Part 2 will come away feeling at least somewhat let down.

8.5 / 10

"I'm not your mother! I'm not your bitch!" drools Courtney Barnett on the opening to the sixth track of Tell Me How You Really Feel.

8 / 10

The shambling jangle (shangle?) of 2015’s ‘Sometimes I Sit And Think, And Sometimes I Just Sit’ evoked the warmer end of the Britpop

Melbourne’s contemplative indie rock star addresses the trials of squaring love with life on the road on her direct and downbeat second album

8 / 10

Australian songwriter Courtney Barnett returns with a second album 'Tell Me How You Really Feel' that's more pointed, political and purposeful.

Barnett’s impossibly effortless tunesmithing remains a preternatural force on Tell Me How You Really Feel.

7 / 10

Courtney Barnett's new album Tell Me How You Really Feel closes with a calm meditation on friendship and togetherness.

8.5 / 10

'Tell Me How You Really Feel' by Courtney Barnett: Courtney Barnett is clever as ever but not as revolutionary in our review of her new full-length.

Barnett’s second album is angrier, gathering her arrows to skewer the world’s problems like a loud battle cry

75 %

Tell Me How You Really Feel is an album that doesn’t pander.

Album Reviews: Courtney Barnett - Tell Me How You Really Feel

8 / 10