Everything Is Overwhelming, but Courtney Barnett Is Going to Save Us All

Courtney Barnett, photos by Joshua Mellin

I am in way over my head.

I knew that I was woefully underequipped for the Bonnaroo-ness of Bonnaroo, but driving through the campsite in my compact car, I could see that I was even more woefully underequipped than I expected. In the backseat were a tiny duffel bag of clothes and a few bags of groceries. The people I was passing had elaborate palaces of camp equipment: those massive shade awnings that dot farmers' markets and the sidelines of youth soccer games, tables and chairs, grills—one camp across from the spot I eventually found has a 70s camper van and a standing tent that looks like it was designed purely for changing clothes or maybe showering in, while the other camp across from me has a generator hooked up to, among other things, a box fan. The thermometer in my car as I was driving in said it was 91 degrees outside, and I sure as hell do not have a box fan.

It's not that I can't handle the idea of camping—I'm a former Eagle Scout, and for the entirety of my teenage years camping was my main recreational activity—but I hadn't really steeled myself for the logistical realities of surviving a four-day music festival in June in Tennessee within the confines of a campground. Technically, as I drove in, I didn't even have a tent yet; I had to pick it up from my sister in the main camping area, where the tents stretch out endlessly in carefully ordered rows, their uniform motleyness broken up by flags showing allegiances to various SEC schools, American cities, and, in at least one case, Jim Morrison. It's an incredible sight, a literal army conjured up for the sake of music (and also community and, OK, probably some drugs).

People don't just come to Bonnaroo; they live for Bonnaroo (and live at Bonnaroo—right as I typed that I saw a couple in athletic gear returning to their tent from a run, apparently disappointed at the more freely available options for sweating profusely). Everyone seems to be coming back for the somethingth consecutive year, and my explanations that this is my first year have been uniformly met with the same reaction: a rapturous gleam in the person's eyes as they picture the splendors that await me mixed with the kind of enthusiastic congratulations usually reserved for welcoming a new person into the family. While other environments might encourage resentment toward the newbies for their incursion into the idyllic world of a tight-knit festival in the middle of nowhere, here people seem amped that there is someone else to share the magic with. I have not told anyone that the last thing I wrote about Bonnaroo, about festgoers' lame South Park and Kanye jokes, ended with me getting called a lot of names on the internet. But even if I did I imagine the mood would remain welcoming.

And yet. It is hot. I did not come equipped with the right clothes to frolic through the fountain at the center of the festival grounds. I do not have a cooler for my food, so I'm mostly eating granola bars. I've learned that while the music lineup might be my focus, it is definitely only one small focus of the overall event: At one point last night my friend texted me about a parade of art cars, and later he told me to meet him at the barn in the middle of the grounds covered in Christmas decorations. None of this makes any sense. Bonnaroo is still weird! Also, I forgot to bring a towel, and a shower seems like something that I will want. So anyway, the music. I needed to see Courtney Barnett, for the sake of reminding myself how much fun I was having.

Courtney Barnett's songs tend to be written with a sort of bemused detachment. Listen to this story, they seem to say, isn't it crazy? What a world, huh? This guy, he decided to kill himself on his commute to work, and now he's on the ledge about to jump. This house, it's a little depressing, but you could totally tear it down and redevelop for half a million dollars. We kissed, and I forgot what I was thinking about. I looked at the cracks on the wall of the room where I was falling asleep and thought about my own mortality. But the thing that keeps these narratives from turning the corner into the sort of cynicism or nihilistic despair that can characterize a lot of relatively mundane descriptions is that they are always delivered with musical conviction. Courtney Barnett shreds. Her songs come together in heavy, passionately delivered shards of sound. Shit is crazy out there, but there are ways to deal with that. One of those, of course, is rocking the fuck out.

Personally, I'm with Courtney. The world is big and weird and full of mysteries. Yesterday, on the drive to Bonnaroo, I ate lunch at a Hardee's, where there was a comment card on every table, where, more specifically it was inevitably someone's job to make sure that the comment cards were fully stocked. I filled mine out with extra marks for the guy at the counter and a final conclusion of the experience in comparison to other fast food restaurants as “About the Same.” I couldn't find a place to submit it, so it's still in my back pocket. Or, on the subject of mysteries, the obvious ones: Why are all these people in this field in Tennessee wearing bathing suits? Why would someone decide to take their vacation for the year to a place where they had to pay $6 to take a shower? Is $6 for a shower a relatively good deal, considering how much a hotel room costs? Bonnaroo, naturally, is a place where one can be in over one's head with relative ease. But then again, so is life in general. Once again, let's rock the fuck out.

Courtney Barnett sings like she's melting into her microphone, her body slumped at a weird angle that, like her music, could almost suggest disaffection but in reality seems closer to total surrender to the art at hand. A look at her lyrics sheet would never, in a million years, prepare you to expect this. She herself is not really even the center of attention; that distinction goes to the overall wall of sound, the existential idea of what is happening on stage. She often brandishes her guitar like a weapon, cock-rock style, held with the neck sticking straight out in front of her, making the instrument seem twice as large onstage. She prowls the space. She crouches to put herself more fully into her riffs. She parades around the stage with her guitar out. She head bangs. She saunters to the mic with an energy that is both infinitely relaxed and kind of jaunty. She demands total attention. All of it is terribly fun and totally transfixing.

I don't know if the Bonnaroo crowd is just like this, if everyone's phones were dead, or if it was some special spell of Courtney's, but, in a rare twist for 2015, nobody watching the show was taking pictures on their phone. People were in Courtney's zone. When she started playing “Pedestrian at Best,” the crowd surged forward to the front, and everybody yelled along to “give me all your money!” Her set was a true, bona fide, spazzing out, the-spirit-of-rock-and-roll-has-seized-us moment of virtuosity. After an emphatic sing-along to “Depreston,” Courtney stepped out of her reverie, her otherwise almost complete lack of stage banter, and mused “I'm not gonna lie, that was a really beautiful moment.” It was.

Courtney Barnett's success in 2015 can seem almost like an anachronism. Her riffs would fit right in in early 90s Seattle, and her no-frills attitude seems at first like pure classic slacker indie rock. But that's not quite right because at the heart of the project of Courtney Barnett is a millennial earnestness, that next wave of postmodern thinking that comes after the dual irony and despair of an older generation of indie rock. It says hey, yes, I know, because the whole world is at my fingertips, what stories are out there, what dreads, minor and major, exist. I am aware of the scope of crazy shit that life entails, of the fact that we are all a little outmatched, and I am just going to do my best to appreciate how funny it all is and also be sweet in spite of it.

So here I am at Bonnaroo, still really wishing I had a towel but remembering how fun it is to sleep and wake up in a tent, still not quite sure what the fuck I've gotten myself into but eager to meet more Bonnaroovians willing to take me under their wing. I'm with Courtney. Life is weird, but this rock thing is pretty cool.

Kyle Kramer is getting sunburnt, probably. Follow him on Twitter.