They are true stories, all of them. Fare-evading down the 96 tram line before riding to the roof of the Nicholas Building. Checking out a swimmer under the Aqua Profonda sign at the Fitzroy pool. House-hunting out further, in Preston.
Even having an allergic reaction, or possibly an anxiety attack, while gardening in a yard near High Street, Northcote.
The tradition of songwriters telling stories that reverberate with a sense of place is strong; the tradition of Australian artists successfully selling songs about their neighbourhood to the world might be politely described as less time-honoured. Skyhooks, Cold Chisel, You Am I – each scaled heights at home with songs rooted in local characters and culture, but failed to translate at scale.
The author of the aforementioned vignettes, Courtney Barnett, is giving a fair impression of having leapt that hurdle.
Raised in Sydney-via-Hobart, Barnett has been based in Melbourne a relatively short time, but her songs could be used to sketch a map of the city's inner-north. And they are resonating elsewhere.
In March, her independently produced debut album, Sometimes I Sit and Think, And Sometimes I Just Sit entered the top 20 of the US and British charts. In the US, it also debuted at number one on the rock, alternative, folk, independent and vinyl charts. It has an average of 88 out of 100 on US-based review aggregator Metacritic. And she's played to millions on chat shows hosted by Jimmy Fallon and Ellen DeGeneres, singing about Weet-Bix, calling triple-0 and the Melbourne property market.
"Basically, everything I sing about is something that happened," she said on a recent wintry Melbourne afternoon.
"I've been here for about seven years in Melbourne, so I think to tell the story it helps to paint a picture of the environment around you. It's not intentional – it just strengthens the story, or the idea, and it kind of creeps in naturally."
Barnett writes melodic, rhythmic guitar rock, mostly delivered deadpan and half-sung, half-spoken. Her music is steeped in '60s garage pop and the '90s underground that became the overground. But it is Barnett's song-writing that has won the most praise: dry, personal, and sharply observational about the part of the world she lives in. She has a great turn of phrase, and a great turn at phrasing, finding rhymes where they shouldn't exist.
Ahead of the Australian tour that includes three shows at the Forum this week, Barnett took Fairfax Media on a tour of northern suburban spots central to her life and songs. The world she describes fans out from the streets around Northcote, where she has sharehoused, pulled beers at the Northcote Social Club, hung out at Thornbury Records, and practised with her band (the Courtney Barnetts) before replenishing at Vietnamese restaurant Lam Lam.
She was living here when she wrote what is probably her most celebrated song, Avant Gardener, about waking on a 40-degree day determined to tackle a rubbish-strewn garden that risked neighbours thinking "we run a meth-lab", and ending up taking an ambulance ride down High Street after suffering an anaphylactic attack: "The paramedic thinks I'm clever 'cos I play the guitar," she sings, "I think she's clever 'cos she stops people dying."
Barnett has since shifted up the street to Thornbury, where she helps run the label Milk! Records out of the "front room, back room and side room" of the house she shares with her partner, fellow singer-songwriter Jen Cloher.
"I moved to Northcote maybe four years ago or so, and it's the longest I've been in one house. And then I moved to Thornbury last year – it's just kind of residential and quiet with a couple of trees and a garden," she says.
"I don't think Melbourne, or High Street, is like a character, it's more just the environment or the landscape around me is just as important as the characters or the narrative are."
One of the standout songs on her new album is set a step on from Thornbury. Depreston, a country-ish lament about house-hunting with a friend, starts as an observation familiar to many in Melbourne and beyond – the disillusionment of having to look in an area you find unappealing to find something vaguely affordable – but ends somewhere else.
"It was this moment of clarity, realising the house we were looking at was being sold because the owner had passed away, and all her things were scattered around the house, and just in this moment I'd been talking about the house as a piece of over-priced property instead of being someone's home and someone's memories," she said. "It was one of those moments of something."
The song's punchline is that, Barnett's powers of observation notwithstanding, the house was actually in Coburg. Decoburg just didn't cut it as a title. "I'd already written the song when I figured that out. But, really, Depreston is about anywhere."
Other songs head further afield. Dead Fox veers from discussion of the merits of organic food ("I was a little sceptical at first, a little pesticide can't hurt"), to fears of swerving in the path of a truck on the Hume Highway. And Kim's Caravan heads to Sunset Strip – Phillip Island, not Los Angeles, as the lyrics drolly note – where Barnett sits on the beach, sees a dead seal and reads a newspaper article about the destruction of the Great Barrier Reef, before suffering something of a crisis of confidence.
Again, it is based in experience – a trip to stay in a friend's caravan and finish writing the album, with a studio deadline looming. The trip was a failure, marred by writer's block, but ultimately yielded an insight that bound the record together.
"I think that song helped me realise that it was a lot about perception and projection – people in life projecting their insecurities and ideas on to other people," she said.
"I've kind of mentioned that to a lot of people and they've said 'yeah, as a musician, taking you the wrong way', and I'm like no, just in general – in life. People always look at other people and project things on to them. And it's just a weird world."
For now, Barnett seems comfortable with what people are projecting on to her, and that her messages are getting through.
"I write songs to communicate ideas and to process thoughts within my head – and then touring is fun and connecting with the audience, and connecting with other musicians," she says.
"Being able to take something like that around the world and share those experiences with strangers in big rooms … it's a pretty incredible experience."
COURTNEY BARNETT'S MELBOURNE, IN SONG
Avant Gardener – An anaphylactic attack while gardening in Northcote, leading to a ride in an ambulance down High Street.
Elevator Operator – Name-checks the 96 tram line, Swanson Street and the Nicholas Building.
Depreston – House-hunting in Preston (but really Coburg).
Aqua Profunda! – Swimming at Fitzroy pool.
Dead Fox – Driving north on the Hume Highway.
Kim's Caravan – An existential crisis on Phillip Island.
