Courtney Barnett
Courtney Barnett
Courtney Barnett
Courtney Barnett
Courtney Barnett
Courtney Barnett
Courtney Barnett
Courtney Barnett
Courtney Barnett
Courtney Barnett
Courtney Barnett
Courtney Barnett
Though this track appears on her 2015 album Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit, Barnett started performing the song live at the start of 2014. (These lyrics have been taken from her acoustic performance of the song at WFUV Radio in March of that year.) She explained the song in her...
[Verse 1]
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
[Verse 2]
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
[Verse 3]
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?
[Verse 4]
Then I see the handrail 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
[Refrain]
If you've got a spare half a million
You could knock it down and start rebuildin'
If you've got a spare half a million
You could knock it down and start rebuildin'
If you've got a spare half a million
You could knock it down and start rebuildin'
If you've got a spare half a million
You could knock it down and start rebuildin'
If you've got a spare half a million
You could knock it down and start rebuildin'
If you've got a spare half a million
You could knock it down and start rebuildin'
Depreston was written by Courtney Barnett.
Depreston was produced by Courtney Barnett & Dan Luscombe & Burke Reid.
Courtney Barnett released Depreston on Fri Mar 20 2015.
Preston is in the suburbs of Melbourne—trees and bigger backyards. So I went and looked at this house; I was house-hunting, and in the car ride home, the whole idea kind of came to me in that moment. It wasn’t a song or an idea I’d been sitting on for a while.
I went home and was sitting around with my guitar, and I’d just been trying to teach myself this Go-Betweens song “Streets of Your Town” and it’s got this kind of riff in it, and the riff for Depreston was kind of born out of playing with those chords and that melody.
The term “Depreston”, I always thought that that was funny. That wasn’t my invention. A couple of my friends said it, because I was unemployed for a little while, and I had to go to Preston once a week to do job-seeking stuff. It was a pretty dark time; I didn’t have any money and I was pretty down...
This song’s obviously about looking for a house, but that’s not really what it’s about. I think it’s about mortality. You build this life. You work to make money, to get a house, to raise your family. And then you die.