“It’s kind of humbling to be able to learn through doing,” Courtney Barnett says.
She’s talking about the lessons she learnt running Milk! Records, the fiercely independent record label she established in 2012 with fellow singer-songwriter and former partner Jen Cloher, which is set to cease operations at the end of the year.
But “learning through doing” feels like a phrase you could apply to every step of Courtney’s career: from setting up Milk! to release her debut EP, to navigating the extreme pressures and destabilising conditions of fame and touring — as captured in filmmaker Danny Cohen’s 2021 documentary, Anonymous Club.
It’s been a “constant process”. “Learning these tools to help me keep powering through and pushing myself, and not doing the things that I know I don’t want to do, and learning what they are.”
We’re speaking over Zoom — Courtney joins Junkee from her current home in Los Angeles, where she’s working on a new record — to discuss her album, End Of The Day. It’s the (famously wordy) songwriter’s first instrumental album, built from improvisations she and collaborator Stella Mozgawa (of Warpaint) created to accompany Anonymous Club.
Courtney Barnett: Capturing Reality In Anonymous Club
The documentary is a beautiful, frank and intimate portrait of Courtney, capturing three years of the songwriter on tour and working on her 2021 album, Things Take Time, Take Time. It’s also about anxiety and depression, creativity, fame, imposter syndrome and being human.
It’s a moving film — at times uncomfortably close to the bone — narrated through snippets from an audio diary she kept during that time. Those moments provide a window into her inner monologue; sometimes juxtaposing the effervescent thrill of playing to a swarming, responsive crowd, to the loneliness and monotony of life on the road. They’re soundtracked by gorgeous but understated, ambient compositions.
End Of The Day was born out of necessity. Danny had an almost-finished film, and needed sections of it scored. Courtney had just handed in the masters for Things Take Time, Take Time. Danny projected the film onto a wall in a studio, and Courtney and Stella played along, loosely improvising.
“We briefly talked about not being too suggestive with the music,” she says. “If it was an emotional scene, we didn’t want to make it a sad, dramatic song. We kind of tried our best to stay somewhere in the middle, so it wasn’t too influential emotionally.”
For many, the most recognisable traits of her music have been her wry lyrics, and the distinctive, deadpan drawl she delivers them with. But, from as early as the psychedelic-tinged songs on her first EPs, the textures and moods Barnett creates with what she plays have been just as big a part of why her most beloved songs hit so powerfully.
Would ‘Avant Gardener’ so perfectly capture the absurd dissociation of a panic attack without its warbled, dizzying guitars? Would ‘Depreston’ ache like it does without the sparse, spacious chords that linger throughout? The emotions her music stirs are inseparable from the expressiveness with which she plays.
That expressiveness is brought to the surface on End Of The Day, on which Courtney’s slowly-arpeggiated chords are left to hang in the air, swirling around Stella’s droning synths. It’s meditative, almost hypnotic at points, but with real emotion behind it.
“The whole process was nice, just to step back and to, I guess, be able to recognise how powerful something can be without depending on the emotional weight of a lyric,” she says.
While she and Stella went into the recording process not trying to be too instructive with the music they created, listening to these pieces on their own reveals just how stirring they are.
“As a musician, we probably can’t help but react emotionally. So even though that was kind of our loose intention, I think a lot of stuff probably snuck through, which is nice.” Courtney points out that, in this way, the music on End Of The Daymirrors the film it accompanies.
“Me being filmed and thinking I’m presenting this idea of myself to the world, and then looking back and kind of seeing another person, in a way. You can’t hide from those truths, I guess.”
Courtney Barnett: The Swansong Of Milk! Records
End Of The Day is the final album to be released on Milk! Records. Its announcement coincided with the news that the label would be wrapping up at the end of the year, more than a decade after its first release: Courtney’s I’ve Got a Friend Called Emily Ferris EP.
Milk! blossomed into an artist-oriented operation. Besides being a vehicle for Courtney and Jen’s albums over the last 10 years, it became home to a group of (mostly Naarm-based) artists who shared an emotionally-aware, off-centre approach to pop and rock: artists like Hachiku, Loose Tooth, Jade Imagine, Evelyn Ida Morris and the Finks. They played shows together, Milk! facilitating residencies and throwing annual Christmas parties, and helping develop a sense of community that continues to resonate even as Milk! winds down.
“It’s sad but people really understand, I think,” she says of the reaction in the days since the news was shared.
“Everyone I’ve spoken to, there’s just been so [many] beautiful, positive stories, and people have been sending really lovely emails, and just saying how much the bands and the label and the community meant to them. It’s just really incredible, and I just feel lucky to be a part of it.”
Arguably, the most important thing a ‘music business’ can offer — be it a label, a venue, or otherwise — is that it create something bigger than its most immediate tangible purpose. Something self-sustaining, that lives on well after the label closes up shop, or the venue stops hosting shows.
Milk! feels like such a label. Courtney says she’s heard stories of people making friends or meeting their partner by coming to Milk! shows, people learning an instrument, or starting a band. “It’s so special to be a small part of that universe, of just branches going off and kind of multiplying. That feels like a really special thing.”
Courtney Barnett: A Lifelong Journey Of Learning
Milk! was set up in a decidedly do-it-yourself fashion, and as her profile exploded, she and Jen were figuring out how to operate a record label step by step.
“Just yesterday, [I was] going through an old hard drive and trying to tidy up my computer. And just going through all these old photos and videos, old documents and stuff, and just being like, ‘Wow, so much has changed in 10 years.’
“There’s so many lessons. There’s lots of little mistakes, bad communication and things I regret. But it’s kind of like, well, all you can do is learn from those situations.”
Courtney’s right. Life is a long lesson. It’s a slow exercise in making mistakes and (hopefully) becoming better for them, developing an understanding of how to move forward while being good to yourself and others. The most important part — and most difficult — is just showing up in the first place, then doing it again the next day.
In the second season finale of Raphael Bob-Waksberg’s animated series BoJack Horseman, the titular equine protagonist — in an act of ostensible betterment — attempts to jog up the hill outside his house, visibly struggling and complaining.
Photographed by Danny Cohen
As he reaches the top of the hill and collapses on the grass, a jogging baboon stands over him with some advice. “Every day it gets a little easier. But you got to do it every day. That’s the hard part.” Incidentally, ‘Avant Gardener’ soundtracks this scene.
Anonymous Club seems to capture a small but significant shift within Courtney, towards acting with both openness to change but also deliberateness within that: a refusal to let change simply happen around her.
‘Get On With It’, the penultimate piece on End Of The Day, soundtracks a turning point in the film, as she decides to embark on a small solo tour as a way to shake off a repetitive funk she’s found herself in. “I think it’ll be really good for me,” she says. Her prediction proves correct.
When we speak, she is rehearsing for a series of shows in the US performing work from End Of The Day, which will similarly be loosely improvisational. It’s new territory for the songwriter. “I’m kind of terrified but really looking forward to it, ’cause I think it’s really pushing me outside my zone of what I’m used to doing.”
Though she’s never made a habit of it, it’s actually not the first time she’s played in such a manner. In 2022, she performed as part of the improvisational gig series Make It Up Club in Naarm, joining Batpiss’ Thomy Sloane and a host of other musicians.
Photographed by Danny Cohen
“I was just kind of on this roll of saying yes to things that made me feel uncomfortable,” she says. “It was great.” Courtney is trying to take that approach forward as she works on the follow-up to Things Take Time, Take Time and End Of The Day.
“Working on this new album and talking to a few other friends who are songwriters and working on new music, it seems like we all go through the same thing,” she says.
“Feeling like we have nothing, no new ideas, like we’re not getting anywhere, and then just learning over time that that always happens. That eventually, if I just work through something and show up, something will eventually come.”
“Every day I have to show up and kind of figure it out,” she says.
“Again and again.”
Courtney Barnett’s new album End Of The Day is out now.
Alex Gallagher is a writer living and working on Gadigal land. They’re on Twitter @sensitivfreight.