Things Take Time, Take Time
| Courtney Barnett
Things Take Time, Take Time
Things Take Time, Take Time is the third studio album by Australian singer-songwriter Courtney Barnett. It was released on 12 November 2021 by Milk! Records, Mom + Pop Music and Marathon Artists. -Wikipedia
Critic Reviews
Show All-
Pitchfork
The Australian singer-songwriter’s fourth album has the directness of a collection of demos. Barnett sounds characteristically laconic; she’s at her best when she lets her guitar take the lead.
-
Paste Magazine
Three years after her last studio album, the rock singer/songwriter has mellowed out to meaningful effect.
-
Rolling Stone
New Courtney Barnett Record ‘Things Take Time, Take Time’ Is Really Good, Really Good.
-
WERS 88.9
The album’s ten tracks showcase Barnett’s anecdotal song-writing as well as ever, and her reflections on life surface encouraging sentiments for all.
-
PopMatters
Things Take Time, Take Time marks a turn toward openness and positivity for Courtney Barnett, who has previously thrived on precisely communicating anxieties.
-
Atwood Magazine
As a whole, Things Take Time, Take Time delivers a microcosmic insight into certain aspects of Barnett’s abilities as an artist. Her skills in lyricism are a prominent feature of this record while the complimentary instrumentation takes a disappointing backseat. This disappointment, though, is derived from familiarity with her previous work and a desire to see her flex her potential. Were one to have no interaction with Barnett’s other albums, they’d likely find this one to be fantastic. But this is far from Barnett’s best work.
-
NME
True to title ‘Things Take Time, Time Time’s unshowy songs take hold more slowly, but Barnett’s small snatches of happiness grip you all the same.
-
DIY Magazine
Things Take Time, Take Time’ is inseparable from the times in which it was made. It’s a strange mixture of comfort and malaise, but it’s probably the most honest document of the past eighteen months, too.
-
AV Club
You won’t find anthemic songs to sing-shout along to on this new record, but there are still some gems.
-
Treblezine
No doubt it felt right for Things Take Time, Take Time to be made in this lush manner (by the standards of her past work anyhow), narcotic and yet hopeful, but it doesn’t feel nearly as right to listen to.
-
Spectrum Culture
Things Take Time, Take Time isn’t the 180-degree return to morose expositions and acerbic witticisms that made us love her in the first place, instead leaning into more straightforward songwriting.
-
Slant Magazine
Courtney Barnett’s Things Take Time, Take Time captures something true and profound about how we relate to the world and each other.
-
Our Culture
Throughout Things Take Time, Barnett exhibits a sense of gratitude that makes her sound genuine even when she doesn’t have something remarkable or poignant to say.
-
XS Noize
While Things Take Time, Take Time can absolutely be enjoyed as a lone document devoid of the further context or history of Barnett’s overall musical milieu, it has a much greater impact if you experience it with the foundation of what came before it. For established fans of Courtney Barnett, you’re in for something special with this one.
-
The Line of Best Fit
Ten tracks intricately woven reveal themselves full of splendor - Barnett’s ternary studio offering urges to be played at full volume.
-
Riff Magazine
Things Take Time, Take Time is simply an album full of her advice. Offering cleverly delivered dialogue and anecdotes on life, she tells listeners to take notes, make lists and deal with things as they come— to take life day by day. Through and through, the album maintains a subdued vibe during its roughly 35-minute runtime across 10 tracks.
-
Glide Magazine
Barnett will have a long career as a songwriter, one that will inevitably have its peaks and valleys, and to be clear this is still firmly in peak territory, but Things Take Time, Take Time proves that that career is going to be worth following.
-
Consequence Sound
With Things Take Time, Take Time, Courtney Barnett Highlights the Beauty in the Mundane.
-
The AU Review
Ultimately, Things Take Time, Take Time doesn’t quite reach the heights of Barnett’s previous albums. Despite this, Courtney Barnett is still well capable of making music that many will find to be an insightful and at times heartwarming venture into the life of an artist re-learning how to find fun and meaning in their life.
-
Kamp Radio
As much as this album was born from hard times, it feels optimistic. None of the songs are bummers; if anything, they’re rousing. Not in a “get up and grab life by the horns” kind of way, but in a “hey, I noticed you were having a bad day, so I bought you a coffee” kind of way. And I think all of us, no matter what we’re going through, could use a friend like that right now.
-
Beats Per Minute
Previously, Barnett moved mountains with her gut-busting commentary, but as Things Take Time, Take Time takes its time to unravel ever so slowly, Barnett’s warranted displeasure reaches annoying levels. While the years since her arrival have given way to some of the most expressive female voices in music, Barnett’s one-trick-pony feels old and tired.
-
When the Horn Blows
This is Barnett at her most meditative and peaceful, weaving an album of simple songs that linger long in the mind.
-
Flood Magazine
Things Take Time, Take Time intermittently taps into Barnett’s strengths, but it scans like a transitional record. Several of these songs are perfectly successful as sketches, but are a few strides away from being fully formed. Barnett’s evolving perspective as a lyricist is welcome, but sometimes her positivity spills into platitude territory, an impediment the songs themselves are not sturdy enough to weather.
-
The Upcoming
Things Take Time, Take Time is by no means monotonous – Turning Green shifts both the energy and palette of the album, delivering what sounds like just the improvised guitar solo lead-out listeners were waiting for over the drums that increase the pace without a hint of a rush, while Write a List of Things to Look Forward To provides not just excellent advice but a blues guitar lick so catchy it veers closer to a pop song. Until Barnett is afforded the series of artsy tour venues she deserves to give these songs life onstage, fans will be more than content to catch up with this new chapter of her musicianship and poetry.
-
Stereoboard
Excitingly, it’s the deviations from the expected that work best on ‘Things Take Time, Take Time’. Three albums in, Barnett seems to be growing, in both stature and ability, and with lockdown clearly helping with the construction of this work, maybe we will be able to look back on this time with at least a couple of fond memories.
-
The Post
The album perfectly demonstrates both the sound and ideas for relaxation. It clearly meets the mark of the overall theme, and fully encapsulates “taking time.”
-
The Firenote
The songs here, like all good art, offer insight and a sense of community and connection, while encouraging us to take time to grow and expand our capacity to live fully and well.
-
Loud and Quiet
It’s an exercise in having seen it all before, without knowing where you saw it; it’s a feat of having heard it all before without knowing what it sounded like. On a collection of songs largely free from any of Barnett’s signature quips, her presence is still enough to turn half an hour’s overthinking into a real page-turner.
-
Hotpress
Overall, Barnett’s third outing boasts her usual dry wit and razor-shape commentary, alongside a healthy dose of quiet serenity.
-
The Aquarian
A delightfully classy and uncannily raw singer-songwriter, Courtney Barnett stuns fans just as much as she relates to them on newly released full-length LP.
-
Sputnik Music
an album expressively making the most of an uncertain time.
-
Live4Ever
Her enforced solitude may not have been so enjoyable for her, but on Things Take Time, Take Time we all reap the benefits.
-
AllMusic
With a more engaging set of songs, Barnett might easily transpose herself into the mode of introspective singer/songwriter, but alas, Things Take Time, Take Time just feels a little too dull.
-
Gigwise
Either way, Things Take Time, Take Time is a record that warrants sitting on the verandah in the cool summer air, listening to Barnett soundtrack your memories of peace and happiness.
-
Get in Her Ears
This collection of songs is rather unassuming, as Barnett favours slow burners and small-scale, day-to day mindfulness. This is not necessarily a bad thing, though. Barnett has constructed an album that maintains a more measured and balanced tone than previous efforts. A radically pleasant album that speaks of the best of the slowed down pandemic world.
-
Still Listening
Things Take Time, Take Time’ is a record everyone needed but no one would ask for it. Overwhelmed by the post-pandemic rush, pressure to keep up with the, once again, too-fast paced everyday, we’re scared to stop. In a ‘eat or be eaten’ reality, ruled by the money obsession and craze for five minutes of fame or success, Courtney Barnett makes a conscious decision to remove herself from the spotlight. We count simple blessing with her. By the candlelight.
-
Lyric Magazine
Things Take Time, Take Time is an excellent album; it’s Barnett’s best work sit Sometimes I Sit. It’s a bold move into new sonic territory, while maintaining the artists standards for songcraft.
-
Northern Transmissions
It’s simple, poetic details like these that Barnett offers, to help us through the time it takes, to reach our goals, to get through the tough times, to really live. Even if we’re living slowly.
-
The Skinny
Courtney Barnett's third album showcases a more intimate, pensive side to the Melbourne artist.
-
The Forty-Five
‘Things Take Time, Take Time’ is a tender mantra for a tender record. If a couple of the quips feel a little lacklustre, it’s easy to miss the acerbic wit of “I think you’re a joke, but I don’t find you very funny” or the grungy fever of her previous album. But Courtney Barnett isn’t here to repeat herself. She dips her paintbrush in the shades of blue of the album artwork but these blues have flecks of optimism. It takes time for it to unfurl but when it does, “the windowsill is momentarily filled with sun.”
-
The 13th Floor
Barnett has said that she feels her vulnerability on this album. This is a reflection of what many felt when the strangeness descended last year. And Melbourne experienced a particularly tough time. This music is free-flying inspirational Pop. It reflects the nature of the great city.
-
Stack
Equally surprising and charming, Things Take Time, Take Time is Barnett’s most accomplished work to date though perhaps more significantly, the album marks a new chapter for one of the country’s most beloved songwriters.
-
Far Out Magazine
Things Take Time, Take Time is a lovely little album.
-
Under the Radar Magazine
Things Take Time, Take Time takes its spot in Barnett’s catalog to gently document a quiet period, released when things are starting to wind back up. Where else could you find a sentiment as sweet as that on the languid rave-up of “If I Don’t Hear From You Tonight,” where an unreachable lover is not automatically presumed to have perished in an automobile accident or out pursuing a torrid affair, but simply might have fallen asleep? The innocence of the pandemic at its finest.
-
Dork
Courtney has always been a master storyteller and, while this album sounds smaller than its predecessor, the pictures she paints on it are more refined and easier to get lost in than ever, another notch in the belt of this prolific young songwriter.
-
musicOMH
Despite its relatively short running time, and the low-key nature of the songs, this third album sounds like a big step forward for Barnett – a move away from the stream of consciousness delivery of her early days and a step towards sincere contemplations of matters of the heart. Things Take Time, Take Time is a tender, comforting salve of a listen, and will be one of those albums that you keep returning to when life seems a bit too much.
Rate This Album and Leave Your Comments