NEW YORK — Courtney Barnett is proud of the new music she's releasing to the world this spring. Getting there, however, wasn't easy. It was a journey through writer's block that she overcame in part by writing about it.
The 38-year-old Australian makes melodic rock with a slight slacker's vibe that is memorable because of her sharply observant writing — witness songs like the stream-of-consciousness ambulance visit of "Avant Gardener," the poignant house-hunting trip of "Depreston" and the ode to keeping perspective during an argument in "Before You Gotta Go."
Work that feels effortless rarely is, of course. Barnett experienced some of that during the three-year process of making her new album, “Creature of Habit.” It's being released Friday.
“I'd come away from a day of writing with one word that I had changed that I was happy with. People in my life who had witnessed it would say, ‘I don’t understand how you can write all day and come up with nothing,'” she said.
“I was like, ‘yeah, me too.’”
Strategies for fighting through mental blocks
Most creative people have to fight through mental blocks sometime, and all have their strategies. The late Tom Petty once told journalist Paul Zollo: “You have to remind yourself that it's a lack of confidence. If you start doubting yourself, you can get in that frame of mind. But you've got to remind yourself, ‘this is what I do, and I’ve done it a lot. And there's no reason I shouldn't be able to do it again.'”
Prior experience helped Barnett. After all, this is a woman who wrote a song called “Crippling Self-Doubt and a General Lack of Confidence.”
“Each time it happens, it can be very catastrophic,” she said. “You think, ‘this is it. This is the last one. I can’t write any more songs.' Very dramatic. I think this time, I recognized those feelings and thought, ‘well, you’ve felt this way before, multiple times now, so maybe, just maybe, if you keep working and showing up and editing and writing, you'll get past it.”
Her new song “Stay in Your Lane” is like a conversation with herself about what was happening. “Rip this thing right out of my head,” she sings, as the background chorus implores: “Please be patient.”
“Great Advice” is a sarcastic take from someone for whom songwriting is almost always a solitary, personal activity. “Appreciate your great advice,” she sings. “And I need your opinion like a needle in the eye.”
The album's cover is a close-up picture of a praying mantis because, well, the little bugger was an inspiration when she spotted one at the Joshua Tree home in California where she was doing much of her writing. She watched him go about his day. The song “Mantis” is her favorite song on the album.
“It felt like this guiding message, and it helped me finish the song,” she said. “A lot of that song feels to be about the process of writing. It wasn't the intention, but when I hear the album I hear a lot of those struggles.”
Changes to her life drive themes Barnett noticed after the fact
Despite what she went through, the music does not feel labored. If there's a central theme, it's about navigating changes in your life. That came from personal experience, too. In recent years, Barnett moved to California and shut down the record label that she had been running back in Australia.
The word “change,” in fact, appears in four of the album's 10 songs. The declaration “I'm ready for a change” is spoken defiantly in “One Thing at a Time,” where Barnett stretches out for what feels like a cathartic guitar solo.
“It's one of those things that I didn't really notice until I finished the album and was listening back,” she said. “I realized the word kept popping up. It wasn't an intentional thing that I was writing about, but it was always in the back of my mind. Now that I've finished the album, that seems to be the main direction of all the songs.”
Moving to the United States seems one of those decisions intertwined with the COVID era, a time that was depressing yet gave her a new appreciation for music. “It's like when you get an idea in your head and I was like, now it's in there and if I don't do it, I'll forever be thinking about that time I thought about moving someplace else and I didn't do it,” she said.
Barnett's new home makes it easier to bring her music to the United States, where she's touring extensively with her band in May and August.
And she's happy to have writer's block behind her.
“Where it ended up, I'm happy with it and proud of it,” she said. “I guess I was having trouble making certain decisions or admitting some things to myself. I don't quite understand what it is. There was some kind of barrier that I had to break in my own head.”
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David Bauder writes about the intersection of media and entertainment for the AP. Follow him at http://x.com/dbauder and https://bsky.app/profile/dbauder.bsky.social.
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