Courtney Barnett brings her new album to Hebden Bridge
The musician brought ‘Creature of Habit’ over to the UK.
Photo: Lindsey Byrnes
Courtney Barnett is back. It’s been five years since her last record and her latest, Creature Of Habit, is so much more than a comeback. It feels more like a rebirth.
In the time since her last solo record, Barnett closed her seminal record label, Milk Records, and relocated all the way across the world from Australia to Los Angeles. Whilst Barnett has always sung about being trapped in the constraints of the mundane struggles of everyday life, Creature of Habit sees her finding joy in slowing down, taking stock and being “reborn every morning.”
With perhaps her most confident and assured batch of songs yet, Hebden Bridge’s wonderful Trades Club was absolutely heaving with anticipation to be among the first to see them performed live.
Unsurprisingly, Barnett’s new material absolutely erupts into life when performed on stage. The album may have only been out for four days, but that didn’t stop the crowd from going absolutely wild as Barnett introduced several new songs throughout the night. When you have a back catalogue as stacked as Barnett’s, you can forgive an audience for coming to primarily hear the old songs.
What was clear at the Trades Club was that people wanted to hear it all. The new material lined up seamlessly alongside classics from her previous records. Songs like Sugar Plum and One Thing At A Time fit perfectly next to old favourites like Depreston and Avant Gardener. During new album highlight Mantis, Barnett confesses that “there’s no such thing as a perfect melody, but I keep searching every morning in the trees.” We can only hope that she never stops searching.
As live performers, Barnett and her band are an absolute riot. They joyfully tore through Wing’s Let Me Roll It with absolute force. For just a three-piece, they are capable of conjuring up an almighty amount of noise that sounds just as complete as it does cacophonous. Stella Mogzawa’s drums are relentless. She attacks her instrument with just as much righteous fury as Barnett slings around with her guitar.
There’s no playing for the sake of it. Not a single note throughout the entire night is wasted. Nothing is ever out of place and, yet, Barnett still somehow performs with such reckless, exhilarating abandon. It is an absolute joy to be caught up in the storm. Barnett is more than just a uniquely creative songwriter; she is simply one of the finest rock guitarists of her era. She wields her guitar at absolute will. It bends and breaks at mercy. She can evoke hurricanes of noise before collapsing them into infectious, bouncing melodies. Her guitar asks questions just as often as it resoundingly answers them.
As the show winds down, it’s impossible not to see Barnett smiling with absolute boundless glee. The joy on stage was magnetic and, between the performers and the audience, every single soul in the Trades Club was having an absolute blast. Like a master magician, Barnett had a couple of aces up her sleeve.
Launching her encore with Pedestrian At Best, Barnett was more than just energised; she was utterly impassioned as she whipped the crowd into a frenetic fever. Finally, the show closed with Nobody Really Cares If You Don’t Go To The Party as the crowd joined Barnett in crying out a chorus of “I wanna go out, but I wanna stay home.” Wherever Courtney Barnett is playing, you want to make sure that you definitely don’t stay home.
