Avant Gardener

In this song, Barnett explores malaise, routine, and her difficulty escaping her own discomfort.

The song’s central symbol – breath, and its deprivation – precipitates in a literal event, an acute “asthma attack,” which artfully doubles as a metaphor for panic or anxiety that comes along with life’s routines and cycles. In the song, Barnett’s inability to breathe takes hold just as inspiration has struck.

Narratively, Barnett’s persona struggles initially with feelings of helplessness and perhaps depression, only to feel inspired by her neighbour’s honest enjoyment of her garden.

However, when Barnett attempts to share in that inspiration and enjoyment, the sudden onset of an asthma attack sends her back to stating she “should’ve stayed in bed today” and “prefers the mundane”.

Her failure to capitalise on this inspiration leads her to internalise her problem. No longer is she facing a momentary attack (I’m having trouble breathing in) but by the end of the song, she herself is flawed at a deeper level (I’m not that good at breathing in).

The title “Avant Gardener” is a play on the phrase “Avant Garde” – meaning out of the ordinary/unique/strange, and “Gardener” – as the song discusses using gardening as a way to escape from your own thoughts. Put together, “Avant Gardener” represents how a normal (or even bland) day of gardening drastically changed.

The term “Avant Garde” comes with certain connotations of underground music and the ‘80s/'90s grunge scenes, which the alternative vocals and themes of this song complement.

In 2018, NPR ranked this as the #33 greatest song by a female artist in the 21st century, saying:

"How long had it been since indie rock manifested a major new personality? Not a showboating troll, but a person whose music told you everything you needed to know? Barnett’s arrival was a revelation, one powered by dazzling wordplay that disguised her desire to go through life making as little fuss as possible. The indignity of the brilliant ‘Avant Gardener’ isn’t that she almost dies of anaphylactic shock while gardening, but that she makes a spectacle of herself doing so."