Courtney Barnett – Creature of Habit

Courtney Barnett's latest album, Creature of Habit, deals with chronic indecisiveness, fears of wasting your life and how to combat such alluring despondency. It's familiar ground for the Australian artist who's been fighting the good fight with acerbic wit and piercing character studies for over a decade now.

This time around, she's leaning into the malaise, though hopeful reflections like, 'Got my head sorted sort of' are offset by worries like, 'Always getting in my own way / Is it too late for making any changes?' or 'I'm doing fine / But my brain feels fried'. Difficult feelings are honestly articulated, but it feels like there's little resolution throughout the album. Site Unseen aims for the iconic territory of 2015's Depreston, with lovely backing vocals from Katie Crutchfield, aka Waxahatchee. But where that song brought the relatable feelings home with perfectly realised specificity, Site Unseen is ultimately too vague to hit with the same impact.

Creature of Habit does end on a genuinely lovely note; Another Beautiful Day could collapse under its platitudes but the lackadaisical arrangement feels assured in its spaciousness and the repeated title phrase is earned after the touching revelation: 'Every time you look at me, look at me / I don't ever wanna lose that feeling'. It's a nice ending for an album often mired in restlessness and anxiety, some seemingly by design, some not. It sounds uniformly excellent – often radiantly sunny – but for an album concerned with wheel-spinning, it spends a lot of time doing exactly that.

Listen to: Sugar Plum, Wonder