‘Horses’: The album that forced Courtney Barnett out of her “comfort zone”
Almost 50 years after its release, Patti Smith’s Horses remains one of the most influential albums to emerge from the electric New York punk scene. Since then, many artists, from Viv Albertine to KT Tunstall, have cited it as the album that kick-started their musical journey. Even today, we have Horses to thank for some of the most compelling names in alternative music, including Sydney songwriter Courtney Barnett, who has frequently paid tribute to the seminal album.
“It’s a really challenging album,” she told Uncut, “But you’ve got to challenge yourself in life or you don’t get anywhere. I try to constantly push myself a little outside my comfort zone, or I’d just stay in my room and be depressed. So I have to keep trying to grow as a person.”
So influential was Horses on Barnett’s artistry that she covered the album at the Melbourne Festival alongside fellow musicians Adalita, Gareth Liddiard, and then-partner Jen Cloher. Speaking to Double J Radio, Barnett explained why Horses had such a meaningful impact on her music: “It made me rethink singing. I’d always been a really shy and nervous singer because I thought I had to sing in a particular way – in a really pretty girl voice. I didn’t have that. It wasn’t my natural thing.”
Adding, “So when I listened to Patti Smith, it just opened that door and made me feel more comfortable in the way I expressed my singing and my ideas. I think that was a real turning point for me songwriting-wise as well. It was a pretty big one for me.”
Cloher also spoke about the power of playing the album live: “Initially, I had all these big, grand ideas about having multiple people on stage in a choir and an angel coming from the ceiling. I went right out there; I went into the world of Rimbaud and Burroughs. Then I thought, ‘Maybe you can just trust that you’ve got four great performers on stage and a great band’. If people are going there to get a live rock’n’roll show, they won’t be disappointed.”
Horses – named after one of Smith’s poems – was a game-changing record that would forever alter the course of alternative music, combining Smith’s background in poetry with the sound of the underground scene that was emerging at that time. Produced by John Cale of The Velvet Underground, the genius of Horses is rooted in its musical simplicity, employing minimalist instrumentation that allows her more intricate lyrics to take centre stage. While Horses is credited as a defining punk album, confining it to a single genre diminishes the poetry and improvisation that make it such a monumental record.
There are elements of Smith’s vocal delivery throughout Barnett’s 2015 debut album, Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit. Like Smith, she favours a half-sung, half-spoken, almost conversational vocal style. Where Smith favours more complex poetic imagery in her lyrics, Barnett tends to opt for a more casual, deadpan style on tracks like ‘Pedestrian at Best’ and the folksy, psychedelic ‘Avant Gardener’ from her debut EP.
What they have in common, though, is the way in which both artists ground their music in personal experiences, a key theme in Smith’s debut album that continues to inspire artists today.
