“I’m having trouble breathing in,” Courtney Barnett sings, her voice ringing a familiar note in the city where her music came of age. It’s a packed Melbourne/Naarm pub on a wet Sunday night, where 200 of the musician’s closest friends, family and fans are squished against each other like sardines. Rain is hitting the windows with a purpose that feels forced – the music is hitting it right back with a force that feels purposeful.

“The room was very energetic and exciting,” Courtney says of the show a few days later, the sun now streaming in from the window behind her, framing her silhouette against a backdrop of that same old city. The ‘secret’ show was the first gig she’d played in Melbourne for a while, a homecoming of sorts to a place where almost all of her music has come from. “Avant Gardener” – one of Courtney’s most beloved songs, evidenced by the chorus of the crowd singing along to every word at the show – weaves in motifs of inner-north Melbourne, the suburbia of High Street surrounding her as she struggles to breathe. Now, based in California but back in Carlton for a moment, she says that Melbourne “still feels like home.”

“It used to be kind of intimidating, and now it’s just nice. I grew up in Sydney, and then I moved to Hobart when I was a teenager, and then I moved here when I was 20. So, it’s like my chosen home, you know?”

Creature of Habit – Courtney’s fifth album, to be released on March 27th – marks the first parcel of music she’s made outside of her chosen home. It’s also the first record that isn’t being released on her own music label, Milk! Records, which she closed in 2023. Suffice to say, it’s been a period of change. On top of all that was a desire to mix up the approach to making music. “I was trying to trust my subconscious a bit more and see what came out without trying to direct it in a certain way,” Courtney says. “That felt new in some ways – I had to trust that it would be OK. I was making a lot of demos and working with different instruments. It’s a funny thing to try to explain – it felt different, but I don’t know how.

“A lot of the time I make loops or music and then sing over the top. A lot of it is gibberish or nonsensical. Seeing the recurring words or the recurring themes that are coming up without any intention, I find that really interesting – it’s like a little peek into my own brain.”

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