{"id":560373,"date":"2026-03-25T19:24:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-25T19:24:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/560373\/"},"modified":"2026-03-25T19:24:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-25T19:24:08","slug":"courtney-barnett-creature-of-habit-album-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/560373\/","title":{"rendered":"Courtney Barnett, ‘Creature of Habit’ Album Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

Self-doubt hangs like a cloud over Courtney Barnett. It has long been one of the dominant threads connecting her work. Do you really want to go to that party<\/a>, or would you rather enjoy a quiet night to yourself instead? Will shaving your head<\/a> liberate you from some unnamed malaise whose source you can\u2019t quite identify? Is tending a garden<\/a> really worth it if it puts you in an ambulance and nearly kills you? The way she captures life\u2019s lingering precarities and how they present themselves in everyday situations has been a hallmark of her songwriting since she first arrived on the 2010s indie-rock circuit.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s an awful lot that Barnett isn\u2019t certain about, so she\u2019s simply going to stick with what she knows and adhere to the routines that have, up to this point, mostly worked out for her. That\u2019s more or less the prevailing attitude of Creature of Habit, the Aussie rocker\u2019s fourth album. Musically and lyrically, Barnett\u2019s latest is a treatise on why humans are such habitual creatures. After all, many of our most deeply entrenched customs are a means of circumventing dreadful risks. Nothing can go terribly wrong if we stay close to the route we already know is safe. When the path branches out, there\u2019s an inherent danger in veering down a trail we haven\u2019t trekked before.<\/p>\n

Partly inspired by a relocation from Australia to Los Angeles and the closure of Milk! Records, the label she co-founded in 2012, Creature of Habit finds Barnett amid some major life changes. Atop Zach Dawes\u2019 gritty bassline and Stella Mogzawa\u2019s rollicking drums, opening track \u201cStay in Your Lane\u201d lashes out at well-meaning advisors who think they know what\u2019s best, even if its narrator is caught in a bout of self-sabotage. \u201cGotta get this off my chest \/ This never would have happened if I stayed in my lane \/ stayed the same way,\u201d she sings, regretting having tried something new in the face of undesirable results. On the following \u201cWonder,\u201d unbridled paranoia has never sounded so breezy, thanks to light-on-their-feet performances from Barnett, multi-instrumentalist Mogzawa, and bassist Andrew Sloane. Go-to indie producer John Congleton also adds to the levity with his crisp, airy mixing job.<\/p>\n

\u201cSite Unseen,\u201d an early standout that features Waxahatchee\u2019s Katie Crutchfield<\/a>, scans as a conversation between two people who seem unsure if a move across the globe was the best choice for either of them. But embarking on this journey together bolsters their courage, and the union of Barnett\u2019s and Crutchfield\u2019s voices amplifies the song\u2019s anxious but tender tenor. The pair sounds excellent together, Crutchfield\u2019s filigreed reediness providing a complementary harmony to Barnett\u2019s lower register. \u201cMantis,\u201d arriving just after the halfway point, serves as the cover art inspiration and thesis statement. One of Barnett\u2019s greatest strengths as a songwriter is how she connects introspection with external scenery, as we\u2019ve heard on classics like \u201cDepreston\u201d and \u201cElevator Operator.\u201d For \u201cMantis,\u201d the titular insect is a reminder of \u201cthe magic of an extra ordinary day\u201d (note the space between those two words) and how we can find solace in the mundane.<\/p>\n

\u201cSugar Plum\u201d plays like a supplementary counterpart to \u201cMantis,\u201d and it\u2019s the strongest lyrical showing for Barnett across the album\u2019s ten cuts. \u201cIt\u2019s so hard to break a habit \/ when it\u2019s just so comfortable,\u201d she sings, and she goes on to showcase her compelling mixture of wit, poignancy, and humor in lines like \u201cYou\u2019re either drowning in the deepest sea \/ or drowning in the kitchen sink \/ Either way, it all feels like drowning.\u201d She segues into the clever and catchy refrain soon thereafter, her keen sense of melody guiding her: \u201cI\u2019m in over my head \/ I\u2019m over my head.\u201d Removing that single preposition changes the meaning entirely and showcases Barnett\u2019s linguistic prowess once more.<\/p>\n

Creature of Habit is largely an album about how doubt can keep us contained, how we form habits as a way of achieving comfort, staving off fear, and ensuring bare-minimum survival, sometimes all at once. But when we create for ourselves a new habitat, such as departing Australia for Los Angeles, that shift can be jarring, and our behaviors are called into question when everything once moved mindlessly as various components of our daily routine. Ironically, Barnett treads well-worn ground in her exploration of these ideas. Nothing here feels unfamiliar; every song remains well within Barnett\u2019s comfort zone of the jangly indie rock she has been making for over a decade. Seldom does she stray from the path we\u2019ve come to expect of her, but that\u2019s not necessarily to a fault. Creature of Habit itself reminds us that not all habits are bad. When you\u2019re this good at what you do, there\u2019s nothing wrong with continuing in that vein. As an astute songwriter, Courtney Barnett really has no need to doubt herself.\u00a0[Mom+Pop\/Fiction]<\/p>\n

Grant Sharples is a writer, journalist and critic. His work has also appeared in Interview, Uproxx, Pitchfork, Stereogum, The Ringer, NME, and other publications. He lives in Kansas City.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Self-doubt hangs like a cloud over Courtney Barnett. It has long been one of the dominant threads connecting…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":560374,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[49,48,75,341],"class_list":["post-560373","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/560373","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=560373"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/560373\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/560374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=560373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=560373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=560373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}