How Courtney Barnett made her new album by retreating to the desert: ‘It nearly drove me mad’

After closing her scene-making record label and moving to the US, Barnett decamped to Joshua Tree – where she learned to slow down and make noise again In the early months of 2024, Courtney Barnett was living in the kind of limbo that usually precedes a major psychic shift. The Grammy-nominated Australian musician was bouncing between sublets as a transplant to Los Angeles – a city she still navigates via a mental map of Melbourne, the place that made her: “Silver Lake is kind of like Colling...

By Brodie Lancaster