Courtney Barnett: ‘Friendship is a thing to be always grateful for, but even more so in the last year’

Aptly titled Things Take Time, Take Time, its ten songs delve into the psyche of the 33-year-old Australian singer-songwriter as she grappled with the effects of lockdown in a Melbourne apartment.

Considering how the period of confinement influenced the record, she says: “I think it just made the world around me a little bit smaller while I was really honing in on the songs.

“I think a lot of that just encourages more detail and a deeper level of thought. It’s quite a patient, slow, quiet album, (that’s) very kind of intimate.”

As 2020 dawned, Barnett had found her own life in flux. Returning to Australia after a long US tour, she was temporarily without a home until a friend offered her a place to stay in Melbourne.

She says she tried not to dwell too much on her own circumstances being turned upside down, preferring to look at the bigger picture.

“I just saw it as the situation that the world was in, then it was just adapting and making do and playing my part,” she says. “I was just lucky I could work from home and I could write.

“I think it was just that: patience and adapting to the world around me.”

Striving to find a sense of balance, she also watched a lot of films, read and painted. “I found all those things really helpful and really calming,” she says. “They were just a good way to process thoughts. It ended up being quite a reflective time, more so than a usual writing period, without those distractions of typical everyday life. It was good.”

Although Barnett ditched almost all of a proposed follow-up album to her 2018 UK chart success Tell Me How You Really Feel, the song Write a List of Things to Look Forward To survived. She views sorting wheat from the chaff as just a natural creative step.

“It’s not so much that they go into the bin, it’s just that they’re part of the process,” she says. “Sometimes you have to write one song to get to another song. It’s still important, but it’s probably a process thing.”

A line in the chorus of the song Rae Street was “stolen” from her father. “It was something that my dad used to say, I just sort of borrowed it and adapted it,” she says. The song’s accompanying video is set in suburbia and features the singer playing several different characters. “That was fun,” she says. “There were some Covid restrictions but it came out in this interesting (way). Bill (Bleakley), who made the video is really clever, it was his vision.”

Another video, for Write A List..., finds Barnett sending and receiving a succession of gifts, a sentiment that chimes with the open-hearted spirit of the album itself. “I think it is quite a joyous, caring album,” she says. “The message of the video was quite simple: just reaching out to people you love and showing them in the simplest way that you’re thinking of them and that you care about them.”

Friendship is a key them in several of the songs. It was something that Barnett says she was reminded of in testing times. “It’s definitely a thing to always be grateful for, but even more so in the last year. When I came home from America and went into quarantine a few friends brought me groceries and vegetables and delivered things to my doorstep. It’s such a simple, beautiful gift friendship, just caring for each other and taking the time to have conversations with someone who is struggling or vice-versa. I think it’s special.”

Unusually for Barnett, the album includes two love songs, If I Don’t Hear From You Tonight and Before You Gotta Go. She admits it’s territory that she has “kind of” shied away from addressing directly in the past. “I feel like love songs have crept in and out from what I’ve done, but maybe in different ways. But without a doubt there’s bold love songs on this album, which were fun to write.”

She credits co-producer Stella Mozgawa of Warpaint for helping her imbue the recordings with an intimate feel. “Collaborators and musicians and bandmates and producers, all of those people are so important,” Barnett reckons. “I feel I spend so much time working on a song, I could take years to write one, but then getting it that extra step sometimes really takes another set of eyes or ears.

“Stella was hugely important in that process. I sent her a lot of my demos and we talked a lot about the direction of the songs and meaning behind the songs and she really helped bring them to life.”

Later this month, Barnett embarks on the first leg of a US tour which resumes in the new year before moving on to the UK and Europe. She says she thinks it will be “really exciting” to share these more intimate songs with an audience. “I’m really looking forward to playing the songs live. It’s always another step from the writing to the studio to the stage, the songs grow again in a different way and they continue to grow over the years. They’re a really fun bunch of songs to play.”

In the meantime, she has written music for the TV adaptation of the 90s coming-of-age comedy film Harriet The Spy. “I just got offered the job and I thought it seemed like such a great project,” she says. “It’s a little slice of history and has a good message. I remember watching the movie when I was younger. I guess I haven’t really done something like that (before) and it was really fun for me to write within certain parameters – the show is directed at kids. It was really enjoyable.”

She hopes to lead to more film and TV opportunities. “I’ve always wanted to do more of it,” she says. “It’s a real skill, but I’d love to do more of that in the future.”

Things Take Time, Take Time is out on Friday November 12. Courtney Barnett plays with Foo Fighters at Villa Park, Birmingham on June 27, 2002 and London Stadium on July 2. courtneybarnett.com.au