Courtney Barnett: Creature of Habit Album Review
Courtney Barnett is aware of the way to make two chords final a lifetime. Her generally slacker, generally twee rock takes recurring main sevenths and wrings them for all their existential which means. It’s a trademark of her craft: 2015’s skeptical ode to suburban residing, “Depreston“, emphasizes the difficulty of feeling truly at home over alternating C and F-major-7 chords for five minutes. While she hasn’t offered character-driven, droll garage rock for a few albums, Barnett has doubled down on those circular, clean progressions to underline her pivot toward first-person narratives about feeling rudderless and looking for direction. Since 2021’s underwhelming Things Take Time, Take Timeshe’s tried to get unstuck through therapy, pottery classes, a Georgia O’Keeffe obsession, and a move from Australia to Los Angeles.
The result, Creature of Habitplays like the soundtrack to a long drive on a desert highway, where all you can hear are the bumps and groans of the car, the rhythms of the pavement, and your thoughts. Appropriately, Barnett wrote much of it from a Joshua Tree sublet, while considering whether she wanted to keep making music. The sprawling, bittersweet atmosphere—shaped by those repetitive guitars and a perpetual search for meaning—at times recalls Barnett’s collaboration with Kurt Vile. Take the wistful chords of “Mantis,” the place she’s pissed off about residing on autopilot and desires to get organized, whereas Andrew Sloane’s bassline chugs alongside and steadily ratchets up the stress. “I got my head sorted, sort of/I keep going just because,” she intones. Emphasis on the “sort of.”
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Self-paralysis and indecision are hardly new subjects for Barnett. On Creature of Habitshe tries to get out of her head and considers how that stagnation affects friends and lovers. In “Sugar Plum,” she apologizes but adds that “those words don’t come easy to me/So I’m looking for a little leniency,” a dose of humor on an otherwise restless tune. Scenic harmonies from Waxahatchee support “Site Unseen,” where Barnett takes responsibility for all of her overthinking. The breezy acoustic guitars and sneaky pedal steel almost make their intention to change sounds easy, a rewarding tension underneath such a sunny song.
There are miles between where Barnett currently is and where she’d like to be, which remains the most enduring inspiration for her best material. When working in that vein, Barnett’s journeys through self-doubt are well-matched with the stomping, meat-and-potatoes indie-rock production that Burke Reid and Dan Luscombe brought to her first two albums. For Creature of Habitshe teamed with John Congleton, who accompanies the least distinct of Barnett’s compositions with flat, clanging percussion and blown-out guitars. Lead single “Stay in Your Lane” is pushed by a blown-raspberry bassline and chalky drums—an ungainly, if applicable, basis for a track about taking one step ahead and two steps again—whereas the flat-footed shuffle of “Same” unexpectedly arrives at ominous new wave synths. It solely takes a minute of “Great Advice” earlier than the garish claps and cowbell hits really feel claustrophobic.
