Courtney Barnett has announced a new album, ‘Creature Of Habit’, out on March 27, and a new single – listen to ‘Site Unseen’ below.
‘Creature Of Habit’ was written after the singer-songwriter relocated from her native Australia to Los Angeles and saw her long-running label Milk! Records close, bringing the confusion that the upheaval invited into the recording process.
The Australian singer-songwriter teamed up with Waxahatchee for ‘Site Unseen’, on which she’s in reflective mood, seemingly open to – and accepting of – change. “Letting go of everything that might have been/And if we like it here/We’ll stay another year,” she sings on the mellow indie rock track, “Let’s figure out the rest another day”.
“I tried three separate times over two years to track this song, and each time it either wasn’t finished or didn’t sound right and each time we had to start again,” Barnett said of ‘Site Unseen’. “I kept hearing this really high harmony in my head, so for the fourth and final version, I asked Katie [Crutchfield of Waxahatchee] if she’d be into singing it with me. I’m a big Waxahatchee fan. I really love Katie’s songwriting and her voice, so it was an honour to have her sing on ‘Site Unseen’.”
Listen to the track below:
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Waxahatchee and Barnett go back a long way, the former supporting the latter on tour in 2018 and joining her on stage. In 2022, Waxahatchee was involved in Barnett’s Here And There touring festival alongside other names including Lucy Dacus, Faye Webster and Sleater-Kinney.
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Barnett’s album announcement, meanwhile, comes after Barnett shared the lead single, ‘Stay In Your Lane’, in October, alongside an eerie video from filmmaker Alex Ross Perry. The clip saw Barnett in the centre of some kind of surgical ward, performing while wearing a blood-stained hospital gown, kickstarting her new era in emphatic fashion.
Check out the album cover and tracklist for ‘Creature Of Habit’ below.
The ‘Creature Of Habit’ tracklist is:
1. ‘Stay In Your Lane’
2. ‘Wonder’
3. ‘Site Unseen’ (featuring Waxahatchee)
4. ‘Mostly Patient’
5. ‘One Thing At A Time’
6. ‘Mantis’
7. ‘Sugar Plum’
8. ‘Same’
9. ‘Great Advice’
10. ‘Another Beautiful Day’
‘Creature Of Habit’ will be Barnett’s first studio album in almost five years, following 2021’s ‘Things Take Time, Take Time’, though she released an instrumental album, ‘End Of The Day’, in 2023. The album was built from 17 meditative improvisational tracks and originally recorded as a score for the documentary Anonymous Club – a portrait of Barnett by director Danny Cohen.
NME gave ‘Things Take Time, Take Time’ a four-star review, writing: “Though it lacks the more immediate bite of Barnett’s previous work, its softness gives it a more tender focus. True to title ‘Things Take Time, Time Time’s unshowy songs take hold more slowly, but Barnett’s small snatches of happiness grip you all the same.”
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At the time of the album’s release, Barnett spoke to NME about how film had influenced her writing. “More and more, I’m influenced by films more than I am music. There’s such a different level of projection on film,” she said at the time. “I’m quite a visual person, and I enjoy being able to see people’s body language, actors’ body language. The very small moments that get captured on film.”
