| Courtney Barnett turns the camera inward on her fourth studio album. | | Photo: Lindsey Byrnes | Words: Heather Collier | | | On her fourth studio album 'Creature of Habit', Australian singer-songwriter Courtney Barnett turns the camera inward, refusing to flinch for the first time in her recording career. Where her earlier work often staggered through a suburban hellscape, this record is less about surroundings and more about self. Barnett bravely faces torment head-on, sifting through the emotional clutter she has hoarded over the past few years. With anxious hands, she traces along the spine of some of her most painful memories, as well as the stories she's been telling herself to stay afloat. Told through 10 sincere, revelatory tracks, she documents a life in transition, but more pointedly, a mind learning how to loosen its grip. | | The opening track 'Stay in Your Lane' sets the tone with Barnett's signature deadpan grain, drip-fed through a psychedelic unease. There's a heavy self-awareness, one of being unmoored. It's clear that she's a fish out of water circling in her own discomfort, shrugging off any offers of help from those around her in an act of self-sabotage. | | On 'Wonder', the spiral continues, this time in a portrait of rumination. The track opens with an involuntary confession: "And I wonder, what you say when I'm not around". Here, Barnett sketches heartbreak not as a singular event but as a cycle filled with chronic uncertainty. Picking up the "prettiest pieces", she attempts to put herself back together, a desperate attempt at saving a relationship. But when all is said and done, there remains the nicotine headaches, hollow afternoons, and ghostly residue of someone half-erased. Objects become vessels for absence: an ashtray, a bookmark, a shirt that still carries a scent. It's the silent devastation that eats away. | | 'Mostly Patient' is softer in nature, introducing a figure who feels suspiciously familiar: a person performing their finest fakery, chasing the shiny things in life like a magpie. Yet Barnett regards them with tenderness rather than scorn, perhaps betraying the portrayal as a mirror to her own behaviour. The album's centrepiece, 'One Thing At A Time,' shifts the tempo a little, kicking things into gear as we enter the second half. With its loose, country-leaning gait and her radio-static tone, it captures the height of sadness as it begins to tip into mania. Bleary-eyed on a dusty highway, Barnett insists "I'm ready for a change", creating much-needed momentum both in sound and soul. | | 'Mantis' reads like a diary entry deliberately left open on the kitchen table. Barnett flits between days on autopilot, scanning around for any sign of meaning. Whether it's the praying mantis on her door, ominous graffiti on a pavement, or a message at the bottom of a teacup, she's seeking some sort of confirmation that might decode the weight of being alive. | | Even in this new side of Barnett that we're slowly peeling back, her sharper edges still remain and she rediscovers her bite on 'Great Advice'. As far as she's concerned, everyone and their opinions can sling their hook. Whether it's her appearance or her career, the track is a firm reminder that it's within her control and hers only. By the time 'Another Beautiful Day' arrives, you're fumbling for your keys on your doorstep after walking home in the blistering sun, blissfully unaware of how you got there, but grateful that you did. The track unfolds like the perfect end credits: fragments of conversation, birdsong, the slow drift of acceptance. Barnett sounds lighter, not because she's resolved everything, but because she's begun to let go: "Say goodbye to those parasites… you gotta put yourself first sometimes". | | 'Creature of Habit' is a record about unlearning old patterns in order to become the person you knew you could always be. Freeing herself from stagnancy, indecision and the paralysing fear of wasting one's life, Barnett is finally able to breathe a sigh of relief and sit with a new kind of clarity. | | | | |
