Courtney Barnett wrapped her ‘Creature of Habit’ tour with a second night at O2 Kentish Forum Town. Image credit: Lindsey Byrnes
Tonight it’s clear she has carried only the essentials across the Atlantic: her bassist, her drummer, and a praying mantis.
‘You make us happy!’ yells an audience member to a teary-eyed Courtney Barnett, as she celebrates the end of her ‘Creature of Habit’ tour in London, selling out a second night at the O2 Kentish Town Forum. Moments before, she’d asked the audience who had also attended the previous night. When just a few hands raised, she stood aghast: ‘That means a lot of people are coming to these shows’.
It should come as no surprise that the GRAMMY and BRIT Award-nominated Australian rocker’s return to London had created a kind of fervour in town. After all, she is rock music’s worst-kept secret. Most known for her rambling, observational ‘slacker rock’, her latest March record, ‘Creature of Habit’, is a notable change of pace. It’s the first Barnett studio album since 2021, excluding a lyric-less documentary score in 2023.
As the dedicated audience on Wednesday night would likely be familiar, it’s been an odd couple of years for Barnett. In 2023, her pioneering Melbourne record label ‘Milk!’ hailed for championing Australia’s female indie scene closed its doors, seeing her leave the country and relocate to Joshua Tree, California.
Tonight it’s clear she has carried only the essentials across the Atlantic: her bassist, her drummer, and a praying mantis. Read the review from Barnett’s closing show of her UK & EU tour below.
Courtney Barnett ‘Creature of Habit’ album artwork. Image credit: Chuff Media
If you didn’t know better, you’d think the three musicians walking on stage were the backing band for a bigger name yet to arrive. Barnett at the centre looks relaxed in a white t-shirt and matching trousers, appearing after support from Aussie post-punk band, Body Type. Once she picks up her guitar, however, Barnett transforms into something more akin to a young Patti Smith, mullet and all.
“With ease, she moves from the spiky, elbow-jutting teenager we were first introduced to 15 years ago, to a softer performer, allowing space for one of the smoothest voices in rock music. ”
The show opens with ‘Stay In Your Lane’, the first single from the latest album, before rearing into 2018’s ‘City Looks Pretty’, a classic cut from Barnett’s catalogue. ‘I’ll be what you want, oh when you want it / but I’ll never be what you need’ she calls out softly, a heavenly example of the self-aware heartache that has traditionally powered so much of her creative engine.
At the beginning of this year, the album rollout for ‘Creature of Habit’ was drenched in a warm, dusty haze, sharing photoshoots of Barnett in her Californian home, alongside tales of her new beginnings, as she looked for any form of artist direction. The search eventually materialised itself as a praying mantis on her doorstep one morning, a symbol that would make up the new album’s artwork.
During tonight's show, the mantis is draped behind her. Under its gaze, Barnett tells the audience of the difficulties she had making the record, expressing relief that after three years, it had finally made it out into the world. It’s a catharsis that ripples throughout the entire twenty-four (!) song setlist.
“Reflecting on the mantis at her door, she sings of ‘looking for meaning or just any sign at all’. The sentiment is echoed by the audience, the song soaring beyond a struggle for artistic expression and into a mantra for what it means to embrace art in an era of crisis.”
Many of the prog-rocking audience begin to move during ‘Avant Gardener’, containing one of the night’s highlights, a scream-along to one of her oldest and most iconic lyrics: ‘The paramedic thinks I’m clever ‘cause I play guitar / I think she’s clever ‘cause she stops people dying’. Though the heart of the evening really beats during ‘Mantis’, a late single on the newest record.
Reflecting on the mantis at her door, she sings of ‘looking for meaning or just any sign at all’. The sentiment is echoed by the audience, the song soaring beyond a struggle for artistic expression and into a mantra for what it means to embrace art in an era of crisis. ‘I keep going, just because yeah, just because’, she reminds the room.
The rest of the set sees Barnett glide between selves. With ease, she moves from the spiky, elbow-jutting teenager we were first introduced to 15 years ago, to a softer performer, allowing space for one of the smoothest voices in rock music. The encore invites Barnett back on stage alone for a moment under the spotlight, as she performs the gentle ‘Mostly Impatient’. It’s one of the show's standout moments, but it’s not long until the crowd is shaking again.
The night ends with 2015’s ‘Nobody Really Cares If You Don’t Go To The Party’, sounding just as current eleven years on, as a rowdy London crowd sends the ‘Creature of Habit’ tour off with overwhelming gratitude for one of Australian rock music’s greatest.