Courtney Barnett has spent the better part of a decade turning the mundane into the magnificent — fragments of everyday life rendered into guitar-driven songs that somehow feel both deeply personal and entirely universal. Her fourth studio album Creature of Habit, out now via Fiction Records, finds her doing exactly that again, but with a sharpness and emotional directness that critics have been quick to notice.
This October, she brings it to the UK in full. Having already played the Radio 6 Music Festival in Manchester last month alongside a run of intimate regional dates, these shows are the first chance to hear the Creature of Habit material in properly-sized rooms — and the routing is a good one, taking in Glasgow’s Barrowland Ballroom, Gateshead’s The Glasshouse, Nottingham’s Rock City, Manchester’s Aviva Studios and Bristol Beacon before closing out at O2 Forum Kentish Town in London on 20th October.
The album itself was written in the wake of a significant period of upheaval — a relocation from Australia to Los Angeles, and the closure of her long-running label Milk! Records. Rather than stepping back from all that uncertainty, Barnett brought it directly into the recording process.
“This album is all about change,” she says. “It’s in the lyrics, it’s in the ideas, I can’t avoid it. It’s about embracing change, but also grieving the things that have changed — the chaos and confusion of all of those feelings.”
The result is a record that grapples honestly with what it takes to get out of your own way and actually feel your life — and it’s got the collaborators to match, with Flea, Floating Points, Waxahatchee, and producers including Marta Salogni and Stella Mozgawa all leaving their mark.
Grab your tickets now, and if you’re in New Zealand, she’s heading your way too.