It’s 2026, and it’s easier than ever to feel ungrounded—endless Internet doomscrolling at home, and the world on fire outside. Australian singer-songwriter Courtney Barnett feels you. She’s called her latest album, Creature of Habit, “a dichotomy—beauty versus the darkness,” but the feeling she encapsulates is that wandering, unmoored sensation of being adrift amidst the madness. The album isn’t as disorienting as that might sound; Barnett works to embrace the uncertainty lyrically and musically, creating a warm, intimate and mellow set of guitar songs that’s among her best.

Creature of Habit is her first proper rock record since 2021’s Things Take Time, Take Time. In the interim, she released a film score of ambient instrumental music, and musically, it’s more akin to Time than her earliest lo-fi, Pavement-indebted releases. Her core sound remains familiar here: Barnett’s spidery guitar lines, talk-sung vocals and gently bouncing bass. But Creature of Habit is a bit more polished, a fuller sound, possibly thanks to indie rock veteran producer John Congleton behind the boards.

Creature of Habit is best at its most stripped down. On “Mostly Patient,” we hear just Barnett plucking her guitar and faint glimmer of a brushed cymbal as she sings to a friend, or to herself, or her listener: “When you’re feelin’ like a stone/ Skippin’ on your own across the waves,” and later, “Sometimes impatient/ But mostly patient/ I see you’re waiting for things to change/ Outside it’s raining, precipitating/ I know you’re aching for brighter days.” It’s sad and sweet, a rainy-day reflection perfectly captured. 

Mostly, though, Creature of Habit is catchy, mid-tempo guitar pop. She lays out gorgeous harmonies on the Waxahatchee duet “Site Unseen.” And on “Mantis,” she’s looking for meaning in finding a praying mantis on her doorstep: “I am exercising how good it feels to be alive/ No surprises up my sleeve/ Everything is temporary.” Everything that is, she means, but change itself.