Indecisiveness, procrastination and lack of purpose; by her own admission, all have plagued Courtney Barnett for years. The twist being, of course, that in her music those very characteristics have become the stuff of uniquely candid songs that have propelled her into cultish stardom. She’s picked unselfconsciously through her psyche over three albums, laying bare her imposter syndrome, depression and more in a manner far removed from the construction of anything like a persona. When change finally came knocking, though, as it tends to for anyone feeling stuck hard with a milestone birthday in sight, it did so loudly. Creature Of Habit, her fourth album, is a document of Barnett’s unsticking, through plain doing.
Indecisiveness, procrastination and lack of purpose; by her own admission, all have plagued Courtney Barnett for years. The twist being, of course, that in her music those very characteristics have become the stuff of uniquely candid songs that have propelled her into cultish stardom. She’s picked unselfconsciously through her psyche over three albums, laying bare her imposter syndrome, depression and more in a manner far removed from the construction of anything like a persona. When change finally came knocking, though, as it tends to for anyone feeling stuck hard with a milestone birthday in sight, it did so loudly. Creature Of Habit, her fourth album, is a document of Barnett’s unsticking, through plain doing.
It’s also an instantly engaging record born out of its author’s collaborative curiosity, the deliberate avoidance of any pre-recording plan and a determination to embrace change in whatever form, while staring down the uncomfortable emotions that so often attend it. Early album sessions were recorded in Joshua Tree with co-producers Stella Mozgawa (who also drums throughout) and Marta Salogni. More studio time followed six months later in LA, where Barnett now lives, with Mozgawa and John Congleton.
Half the set edges Barnett’s songwriting into new terrain and realises her ideas in a fresh way, zinging with different sounds – ’80s jangle pop, dreamy psychedelia and synth pop included – while avoiding any whiff of forced reinvention. While Creature Of Habit signals that its maker is moving on both personally and creatively, it should also shift public perception. The “slacker rock” tag was always a little off – a misreading of Barnett’s relaxed song forms, see-saw phrasing and casually self-enquiring lyrics as disaffection or negativity – but it’s even less appropriate now.
Change is announced in the opening slot with “Stay In Your Lane”. From paralysis and despair (“Feel like a fish on a hook/I’m crying like a child would”) Barnett wrings resolve (“And now I’m here I might as well just go through with it”), against the kind of choppy, high-energy backdrop with a blown-out low end that Chris Forsyth might enjoy. A short siren whoop, multi-tracked vocals and a sudden ending complete the bracing picture. “One Thing At A Time” begins with the sun-glazed, loping charm that made Kurt Vile and Barnett such a natural pairing, then stretches out into Pond-like trippy languor before closing with two-and-a-half minutes of irresistibly gnarly shredding. “Oh, my god, I’m ready for a change,” the guitarist repeats, fed up with her mind “always working from the same old pattern”.
More unusual in their departure from form are “Sugar Plum” and “Same”: the former (note the Cocteau Twins-ish title) lays insistently chiming, ’80s-pop guitar atop an over-easy rock chug, while “Same” borrows from the moodier side of that decade, adding needling guitar, swirling synth and squirts of electronic noise to a Bananarama-ish melody. Barnett’s skill of combining groovy skronk with sarcasm shows in “Great Advice”: percussion is pushed to the fore, strings whine and the talk – “Appreciate your great advice/But I don’t wanna do my hair all nice/I like it this way” – comes with an eye roll.
In between these newly exploratory songs sit the more familiar, freewheeling likes of “Mostly Patient”, a twangling, melancholic charmer with a country-pop bent and “Mantis”, which supplies the album’s title and sees Barnett watching said insect on her door, “looking for meaning or just any sign at all”. Kindred spirit Katie Crutchfield steps up for vocal harmonies on a burnished “Site Unseen”. Barnett exits on “Another Beautiful Day”, a five-minutes-plus, philosophical acceptance of being “reborn, every morning/Still somehow getting older”, expressed over a mesh of brightly ringing guitars, Wurlitzer and echoed vocals, tricked out with birdsong and bathed in a Californian warmth that’s almost palpable.
Barnett’s USP is the singularly unagonised mapping of an interior life that gets in the way of her living out in the world, her consummate guitar work a major part of its soundtrack. In Creature Of Habit that plays out rather differently – she’s sharing the process of change as well as the sound of it, as if in real time. “I think the reason I write is because I’m trying to understand something,” Barnett tells Uncut, “trying to unlock some part of my brain that seems hidden from me. Each record feels like a document of that time, while also being a stepping stone into the next chapter.” The rush of this album, then, lies in its capture of Barnett’s gradual surfacing as a different creature.
The post Courtney Barnett’s Creature Of Habit reviewed: deep, fresh breaths and sweet familiarity on the Melburnian’s fourth appeared first on UNCUT.
