This week we’re featuring Creature of Habit, Courtney Barnett‘s latest album released last week.
The album’s title comes from the track Mantis, a song that began as a synth-and-drum demo by Barnett’s longtime collaborator Stella Mozgawa years earlier. “I was by myself, feeling particularly lost, and I saw a little praying mantis. It felt like this strange, beautiful sign from the universe.”
Barnett and her band were holed up recording in the studio in Joshua Tree, and while there she connected with the desert and became obsessed with painter Georgia O’Keeffe through cooking out of O’Keeffe’s cult cookbook.
After closing her label Milk! Records she’s spent the last few years in the US and this album developed from musings during these endings and new beginnings. This time she called the band together and brought the curiosity, indecision and anxiety into the recording process, rather than writing it all out first. The result is an album that continues to engage with the central question Barnett has been consumed by since she started writing songs: how to get out of your own way so you can truly feel your life.
“It’s about embracing change, but also grieving the things that have changed – the chaos and confusion of all of those feelings.” Get yourself a copy of Creature of Habit and listen into the universal sounds on this next phase of Courtney’s journey.