Courtney Barnett’s New Song Is A Love Letter To Instant Mi Goreng Noodles, Which Is Fucking Grouse

Bulk packs of instant ramen and mi goreng noodles are the staple food of impoverished uni students, exhausted shift workers and people who just can’t be arsed to cook tonight everywhere. Thanks to a diet of mi goreng, students can maintain a constant base-load MSG level upwards of ten percent of their entire body mass for years at a time. People who can’t cook toast know the instructions for instant ramen by heart. Trying to ingest mi goreng flavour packets before violently throwing up everywhere is a rite of passage in high-school playgrounds across the land.

Alongside the late-night kebab, the stadium meat pie and the road-trip choccy milk, mi goreng is a vital yet chronically underappreciated national dish. So where is our cultural appreciation for the mysterious, chemical-laden concoction that keeps Australia running?

That burning question may now finally have an answer. Melbourne’s Milk! Records has just released Good For You, a six-track compilation EP that’s out on Valentine’s Day, and it contains a new Courtney Barnett track that finally gives the little meal that could its due.

With a guitar hook reminiscent of that other great Australian hit, Smudge’s ‘Divan’, and lyrics like “that MSG tastes good to me/I disagree with all your warnings/It can’t be true that they use glue/To keep the noodles stuck together”, ‘Three Packs A Day’ fills a hole you didn’t even know needed filling. Mi goreng for lunch today.

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Feature image via Courtney Barnett/Instagram.