Courtney Barnett has a winning way with words, and never more so than on her recent song Depreston, which is on our short list for Best Song of the Year.  Barnett is a master of lyrical irony and inflection (lyrics at bottom).  Watch below as the Tonight Show craftily captured Barnett rendering the song solo.  We are particularly struck on “Streaming Monday” by the closing coda:  “If you’ve got a spare half a million, you should knock it down and start rebuilding.”  Yeah, which musician doesn’t these days?

“You said we should look out further,
I guess it wouldn’t hurt us.
We don’t have to be around all these coffee shops.
Now we’ve got that percolator,
never made a latte greater.
I’m saving twenty-three dollars a week.

We drive to a house in Preston,
we see police arresting
a man with his hand in a bag.
How’s that for first impressions?
This place seems depressing.
It’s a “Californian bungalow in a cul-de-sac.”

It’s got a lovely garden,
a garage for two cars to park in
(“or a lot of room for storage if you’ve just got one”).
And it’s going pretty cheap you say?
“Well it’s a deceased estate…
aren’t the pressed metal ceilings great?”

Then I see the handrails in the shower,
a collection of those canisters for coffee, tea and flour,
and a photo of a young man in a van in Vietnam.

And I can’t think of floorboards anymore,
whether the front room faces south or north,
and I wonder what she bought it for.

(If you’ve got a spare half a million, you should knock it down and start rebuilding)”