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When Courtney Barnett’s debut album, Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit, came out in 2015, it felt tailor-made for driving yourself around on a made-up errand, doing your level best not to simply stay in bed. The juxtapositon of Barnett’s deadpan delivery and the usually upbeat, indie-pop-inflected strains of her songs made them easy listening in any mood, but especially when you were feeling bad and trying to feel better.
Barnett strikes that same appealing balance on Creature of Habit, her latest album from Mom & Pop Music. The song “Sugar Plum,” in particular, includes a lyric that seems to sum up the studious detachment and yet haunting rawness of so much of Barnett’s music: “ I know I got a sensitive heart / I’m always picking it apart when I throw it to the vultures / They don’t want it either, probably too sincere.”
Vogue recently spoke to Barnett about loving the California desert, moving to Los Angeles from Melbourne, working with Waxahatchee’s Katie Crutchfield, and her preference for vinyl over streaming music.
Vogue: Can you tell me how it feels to release a new album five years after your last one—2021’s Things Take Time, Take Time—came out?
Courtney Barnett: I did an instrumental album a couple of years ago, which doesn’t really count in terms of traditional discography. But I guess I kind of finished up touring the Things Take Time, Take Time album, then I moved to America and finished touring there, and then I was living there, and I closed my record label in Australia, which I’d started 13 years [prior]. That was kind of a really big, scary, sad decision, but it sort of found me at a crossroads to start a new chapter. I started writing the songs that became this album in the beginning of 2023.
What was the recording process like for Creatures of Habit?
I pretty much wrote for a year, and then I set myself a year from then to get in the studio. I started in Rancho De La Luna, which is in Joshua Tree, where I was living at the time, so it was my local studio; it’s just such a great spot. So much cool stuff has been done there. I’m in LA now, but I love it up there. I miss it. I wrote a lot of this album there. It really kind of gave me some space and time to reflect and to write, which was nice, and then recording there was so nice. It was just so, so peaceful, with no real distractions.
Would you say you’re a desert person?
I enjoyed living there a lot, but, you know, I’m not there now, so I can’t really claim it. [Laughs.]
How are you finding LA?
I’ve really been enjoying it. I adopted a dog and I really love hiking; I love the proximity of friends and restaurants and social life and work, but then, you know, 20 minutes up the hill, you can hike for two hours. I went to Mount Baldy for the first time a couple of weeks ago, which is only an hour away, and it was so crazy and stunning.
What is your musical community like in LA versus Melbourne?
I think it’s kind of constantly changing. Even at the moment in Melbourne, everyone’s kind of going through their own life journeys and changing the way they’re doing things, so even Melbourne looks really different than when I lived there. I always just kind of had these little pockets of friendships in different places everywhere because I’ve been touring for the last 10 years. I guess the good thing about LA is that it’s such a busy place that lots of people seem to end up here, or come through here, or live here for a while, so I’ve got some good music friends here, which is nice.
I love that you worked with Waxahatchee on a song for Creatures of Habit. How were you first introduced to Katie Crutchfield?
We toured together in 2018, so I reckon we must have met a year or so beforehand, and we were doing a lot of the same festivals and stuff, so we kind of became friends over the years. When I wrote that song “Site Unseen,” I thought that her voice would be so perfect for the high harmony, because her range is so beautiful. I just asked her if she’d be up for it, and she was!
Did the songwriting process feel different at all for Creatures of Habit than for your previous albums?
I guess I always kind of start in a similar way, but it did feel a bit different. Maybe it’s just because I’m different and, you know, years had passed since I’d written a new song that I really was excited by. I think my kind of writing process is always morphing and changing and evolving, but it’s normally me sitting at a desk or sitting with a guitar or sitting at a piano.
What were you listening to the most while you made this album?
I think I tend to listen to older things. Maybe subconsciously I’m scared that I’ll, you know, take something in and regurgitate it too obviously, but I was listening to Paul McCartney, and I had this record called Midnight Love by Marvin Gaye, which I had on vinyl in the desert. I try to gravitate more towards vinyl than streaming stuff, so I found myself putting on the same records a lot. Midnight Love was one of them, and there’s a couple of Harry Nilsson records that I was listening to. Depending on the mood of the song or the inspiration I was looking for, I would kind of find something to get me in the zone. I get overwhelmed by all the choices with streaming music and it’s just too much, so it’s nice to just pick up an old vinyl that you or someone else bought and just sit with that.
This conversation has been edited and condensed.
