Courtney Barnett introduced herself, and her quirky individual sound, with the song Avant Gardener back in 2013.

​I was instantly drawn to her sound, her conversational songwriting style, her humility and humour, and her sheer Australian-ness.

Not to mention the titles: this came out on an EP called A Sea Of Split Peas – itself a compilation of two earlier releases: How To Carve A Carrot Into A Rose and I’ve Got A Friend Called Emily Ferris.

When her debut album arrived in 2015 – Sometimes I Sit And Think, And Sometimes I Just Sit – it seemed to capture the personality of the person (presumably herself) she portrayed in this song, Avant Gardener.

It became an instant favourite, and it’s still one of my all-time favourites. It’s so unlike any other song. 

Not just the loping rhythm and woozy distorted shimmer of those hazy guitars, and not just those languid semi-spoken vocals – like a young, female Bob Dylan if he’d been Australian – but the story in the song.

It has to be the first ever written about an asthma attack – the narrator almost dies of anaphylactic shock – and probably one of the first written about gardening. 

Assuming it’s autobiographical, it’s Courtney’s envy of her neighbour’s veg plot that sparks her own desire to get her hands dirty, but that only sets off respiratory problems: “It’s 40 degrees and I feel like I’m dying.”

Meanwhile, her anxiety and depression is fuelled by her dissolute lifestyle, sleeping in late while her garden is so full of rubbish that “the neighbours must think we run a meth lab.”

Inspired by the green fingers of the nice lady next door, she declares: “I wanna grow tomatoes on the front steps. Sunflowers, bean sprouts, sweet corn and radishes.” But trouble begins as soon as she starts pulling up weeds and finds she’s “having trouble breathing in.”

Those hazy guitars bend their notes wonkily out of tune as if they too are going into shock, while she picks up the phone to call an ambulance, which swiftly treats her symptoms.  “The paramedic thinks I’m clever ’cause I play guitar,” she observes, “But I think she’s clever ’cause she stops people dying.”

I love that line: so full of humility and humanity – and funny too. And this is one of my favourite songs. So here is the video with Courtney playing tennis (badly) with her hipster friends until a disputed line call missed sparks a mass brawl – a storyline that’s utterly irrelevant to the song itself.

Which somehow makes it more watchable. Ten million views suggests I’m not alone there.