Courtney Barnett and Kurt Vile — Lotta Sea Lice


Milk! | courtneybarnettandkurtvile.bandcamp.com
 
Three’s a crowd, two’s company

· · ·

Double-billed musical collaborations have a chequered past. On paper, it’s a neat idea to smash together two minds and parse the particulate thence flung. But in reality, it’s a question of finding two compatible minds that will smash together in interesting ways.

The surprising joint venture embarked upon by Lady Gaga and Tony Bennett amounted to an album-length guest spot. Gaga’s outsized personality and competent, if unrefined, jazz chops were swallowed whole into a yawning chasm of cold, glossy jazz standards. An artistic vision shared between David Byrne and St. Vincent was let down by their completely incompatible musical skillsets, her frizzled guitar solos largely fettered to his chunky columns of brass. And a certain hotly anticipated tournament of the minds turned out fun but toothless, sawing off both Cloud Nothings’ bite and Wavves’ bark.

A dyptich of duos, then. One musician may be entirely subsumed into the other, or both will chafe at the other’s excesses and idiosyncrasies and confine themselves to some anodyne middle ground. These collaborations are mere curiosities, tiding us over until the next proper album where they can get back to being themselves.

Not so for Courtney Barnett and Kurt Vile. Lotta Sea Lice is an intimate journal shared between two people who just get each other. Together, they paint a series of sardonic tableaux and lackadaisical observations imbued with the thrall of seeing the beauty of the world through someone else’s eyes. Together, they push each other higher.

Kurt and Courtney are both known for their supple seventies rock, but when they put their heads together, their shared bone-dry wit is spontaneously garnished with a drizzle of sweetness. They’re just lying back and enjoying the moment — “Speckled sunlight on my freckles / Salty water curls my hair;” “I cherish my intercontinental friendships / We talk it over continental breakfast” — a sentiment threaded through each song. Twice they extend well past the point where any self-respecting musical number would end, just because they like playing music together. Their lengthy instrumental interludes are neither indulgent nor pretentious. They just are.

They trade off verses like some effortless juggling act. As if to show off how well the two compliment each other, they each slip into a cover of the other’s song. Two perfect fits. Two songs that flatter the performer in ways that neither would have come up with alone.

The perpendicular mismatch of accents on display is a particular highlight, especially when Kurt and Courtney sing in unison but not quite in time. Each performs with a distinct but different drawl. Smooth and silky like warm milk, Lotta Sea Lice is Philadelphia cream in Melbourne coffee.

Perhaps it is off-putting in concept to third-wheel such a pea-pod pair, an impression not lessened by their decision to title the album after some opaque in-joke. But they seem to be the kind of folk who are completely chill about sharing their views, the kind of folk who instinctively put others at ease.

It seems that all those misfires from the second paragraph are alike, but each success is different in its own way. Courtney and Kurt just click, like Benny and Björn, like Lennon and McCartney, though unlike them these two are already consummate solo acts. They have nothing to prove, so they have nothing to lose and nothing to hide. They’re just mates jamming together. A pair of figures hunched over twin guitars, two heads of long, dirty hair nodding in time, enjoying the moment.