Courtney Barnett is in her late-30s, over a decade into an incredibly successful music career, and past the point of being Australia's next big thing: she arrived a while ago.
Where some artists fear maturity might dull their edge, Barnett recognises how experience works in her favour.
While making her latest album, Creature Of Habit, disjointed recording sessions and writer's block had the singer-songwriter feeling a little unstable. But this wasn't her first time at the big dance.
"There were moments where I thought it would never get finished," she says.
"It kind of comes in waves. I think that's just the creative process for me: it's ups and downs. I said to myself, 'I've been here before. I've made a few albums, and I've felt this feeling. I'm just going to trust that hopefully I'll pass whatever the difficult moment is and just get on with it.'"
Old habits die
Spoiler: it did pass, resulting in yet another remarkable collection of songs in which Barnett captures our insecurities and reflects them with startling clarity.
That's long been one of her great strengths as a songwriter. The details in a Courtney Barnett song often belong to her, but the feelings somehow belong to everybody.
"I know I got a sensitive heart, I'm always picking it apart when I throw it to the vultures. They don't want it either, probably too sincere," she sings on Sugar Plum, a highlight from Creature Of Habit.
Barnett won audiences over from the outset with sharply observed stories about the messy process of trying to figure out life. Her songs often felt intensely personal, but left enough room for listeners to find themselves inside them.
When the young, shy artist was thrust into the spotlight following the success of her early EPs, those innermost thoughts suddenly became open to scrutiny. Seeing her work picked apart by strangers was unsettling.
These days, she's more accustomed to it.
"It kind of adds up, time and experience and all those things … I just feel a little more comfortable doing what I do," Barnett says about her current standing.
While she feels the impact of years in the game, she still finds it a challenge to pinpoint what exactly has changed.
"I feel like I've learned a lot a lot of small but important lessons, but sometimes I don't quite know how to articulate them. One of them is just learning how to trust myself a bit more.
"In the past, I would often spiral into this self-doubt, which just doesn't feel very productive or enjoyable.
"Even just facing a difficult moment and just working through it, something that sounds kind of simple; it was hard to trust in that process.
"Sometimes you got to fake it till you make it. You've got to convince yourself that you 100 per cent know what you're doing."
Start somewhere
While experience helped, Barnett also benefited from coming back to her discipline with fresh eyes.
Making the 2023 instrumental album End of the Day — the soundtrack to the Anonymous Club documentary about her life on the road — gave her a chance to work in a different realm.
"When I started working on it, I was just kind of learning how to write again because I hadn't written a song for a little while," she says. "So, it felt in a way that I was kind of beginning again.
"I was doing a lot of free writing, trying not to go into writing with any kind of intention or idea. I was kind of just trying to understand what was rattling around in my head as unfiltered as humanly possible.
"I guess a lot of my writing is kind of like that. Then it shows me something and then I kind of piece a narrative or an idea together. I guess it was just a thing circling in my head."
Condensing swirling thoughts into compact and compelling cuts of relatable indie rock is not easy on a technical level. Making sense of that flood of thoughts can be just as challenging.
What's worse, there's not really anywhere to hide when you're bleeding onto the page.
"It can be confronting, because you're face to face with yourself and holding a mirror up to yourself and sometimes you see things that you don't like," Barnett says.
"I was exploring parts of my personality or just parts of my world or life. I guess that kind of plays into the album title.
"I was looking at parts of myself that I didn't really like or that I wanted to change or wanted to work on, and kind of gently and kindly doing that work or making those subtle changes."
The You and the I
In many of her best songs, Barnett tells stories about her own life. A medical incident in Avant Gardener, a trip to an open home she can't afford in Depreston, the general suburban malaise of Rae Street. But the inward focus is not always intentional.
"I think that sometimes when I do look out, or write something for someone else, or to someone else, it often makes its way back around to me somehow," she says.
"Whether that's putting myself in someone's shoes or finding some kind of level of connection or empathy or something. I don't know. But I often end up talking to myself in a weird roundabout way."
And if you see yourself in Barnett's songs, you're right. If you reckon she's singing about you, she's not going to argue.
"The 'you' and the 'me' and the 'I'… it's kind of interchangeable," she says.
"In some songs, I might be addressing multiple people or things in my head, but it might sound like it's to just one person."
Of course, the song and its intent don't necessarily belong to its creator. Perhaps music's most magical power is allowing us to interpret it how we feel, and project our own emotions and life onto it.
"It's why I don't like over explaining meanings of songs, I don't always find it necessary," Barnett says.
"I love learning what old songs are about and the story that is behind some old classic song, but also, it's nice that we get to project our own stuff onto music. I think that's really beautiful."
Making connections with those who see themselves in her songs brings the purpose of her endeavours into sharpest focus.
"I was just thinking of moments in my life where someone has come up to me and said exactly that. They've been the moments where I have really truly felt that connection. I'm really grateful for that," she says.
"I think it's sometimes it's so hard to know… you're just sitting in your room making music and then it goes on the internet and there's comments and all that stuff…
"But sometimes it doesn't really connect until a human says that or I play a show and I see people singing along or having an emotional moment. That's extremely powerful. I'm really grateful for those moments."
Courtney Barnett plays Brisbane on Wednesday before shows in Sydney and Melbourne on Friday and Saturday.
Creature Of Habit is out now.
