The Australian artist moves between tense riffs, twilight ballads, and hushed melancholy to deliver an album that condenses a significant portion of her discography.
With Courtney Barnett, there is always a way to enter her songs, as if you’re pushing open the door of a bar at dusk. No splash, with the steady confidence of people who know what the night will bring.
Following the detour of End of the Day (2023), an instrumental aside crafted for the documentary Anonymous Club that focused on her, this fourth album marks a return to nerve: front-and-center vocals, a spoken-sung delivery that feels casually nonchalant, and above all a gritty electric guitar capable of shaving away at a chorus.
Like notebooks scribbled on the van’s passenger seat
More taut than Things Take Time, Take Time (2021), written in the weightlessness and pandemic lethargy, yet still infused with a certain melancholy, this new record stands as a cornerstone, a distillation of Courtney Barnett’s body of work.
The singer and musician confirms life changes here: the closure of her Milk! Records label, leaving Australia, and settling in Los Angeles. The tracks on Creature of Habit unfold like notebooks scribbled on the van’s passenger seat, moving between cities and a handful of sleepless nights.
Tracks such as Sugar Plum and Mantis carry the insistent sweetness of lightly taut ballads. Farther along, the duet with Katie Crutchfield of Waxahatchee (Site Unseen) takes the shape of a hushed dialogue, two voices brushing past each other with precise timing. Nothing groundbreaking, but Creature of Habit is a clearly inhabited album, both comforting and tense, an ideal companion for introspective getaways.
Creature of Habit (Fiction Records/Universal). Out March 27.
