Courtney Barnett has released a new song titled “How to Boil An Egg.” The track is pulled from her Split Singles Club, which is a collaboration between Milk! Records and Bedroom Suck. Learn more about the project here. The Melbourne based singer-songwriter is a vital part of her local scene, so her involvement in a local effort like this is unsurprising. Other bands involved in the project include Cable Ties, Dag, Primo, La Mood, Jade Imagine, Emlyn Johnson, Treehouse, Hachiku, The Maraby Band, Lehmann B Smith and Blank Realm.

Barnett has explained that while this song is new for many, it is in fact a pretty old song. It was in the singer’s repertoire during her open-mic days when she was 21 (she is 29 now) but it never ended up being recorded.
The upbeat song, which clocks in at just under four minutes, has all the signposts of a great Courtney Barnett tune. It begins with a jangling guitar riff and a ton of energy, before Barnett’s trademark deadpan singing style helps it transition into a bluesy folk-punk romper. She described it as “left of album-centre,” and a song that really wouldn’t fit anywhere other than a singles series.

Her first release of 2017, it is coming out as she is working on the follow-up to her massive breakthrough debut Something I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit – potentially with at least a little bit of help from Philadelphia indie-folk singer Kurt Vile. She confirmed she was working on the album when talking about “How to Boil An Egg”: “…for personal-posterity I updated it and made this version recently when I was bunkered up in the bush doing some demos for my next album.”

Last year was not without new music from Barnett, as she released a video for “Elevator Operator” that featured alternative music stars like Jeff Tweedy and Sleater-Kinney and paid tribute to that venerable meal of so many DIY musicians, Ramen, with her ditty “Three Packs a Day.”

Photo Credit: Raymond Flotat