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Ali Barter Ali Barter has something. It’s something that leads from her eyes to her hips; it coils around 70s stadiums and backroom bars; and it clears it’s throat from the neck of her guitar. When people are fumbling to describe it, they use words like “presence” or “compelling”. It’s something that prevents people from turning away. The former triple j unearthed winner has spent the last few years honing her sound, testing combinations and serving an almost old-fashioned musical apprenticeship in her home town of Melbourne. The journey has been about embracing the power chords and dancehalls that filled her teenage years, as much as the delicate harmonies she’s been drawn to lately. There is a high wire somewhere between He War and Like a Prayer, and Barter has been determined to find it and walk it. With sweatbands. Like the best of them, Barter was literally a classically trained choir girl turned rambler and ‘rat bag’. The darker end of the street beckoned and women liked Hole