Kurt Vile & Courtney Barnett Detail Collaborative Album Lotta Sea Lice
Earlier this summer, we found out the very exciting news that Kurt Vile and Courtney Barnett had recorded a collaborative album and were going to tour in support of it in the fall. The album’s first single is expected tomorrow, but we have some more details about the team-up thanks to a new interview in Rolling Stone. It’ll be out in October and it’s called Lotta Sea Lice, which makes sense because they’re touring with a stacked backing band called The Sea Lice.
The project got its start in 2015 when Vile started daydreaming about Barnett during a photo shoot and began writing a song for her; that song is called “Over Everything” and after he sent it to Barnett, she jumped at the idea of a side project because she was finding it hard to write a follow-up to her debut. They met in a Melbourne studio a few months later and intermittently worked on the material throughout 2016.
Some of the songs are originals — there’s one called “Continental Breakfast” that Vile wrote about their long-distance friendship while on vacation — and some are covers. There’s a cover of Belly’s “Untogether” and one of Jen Cloher’s “Fear Is Like A Forest.” (Cloher, who is Barnett’s partner, just released a new album this month.) Barnett also recorded a version of Vile’s song “Peeping Tomboy.” They also recorded a cover of Fats Domino’s “Blueberry Hill” that won’t be included on the album, but they want to release sometime in the future.
Presumably we’ll find out more concrete details tomorrow when the first song from it is released, but that’s enough to get even more excited!