Courtney Barnett - End Of The Day

Listeners who’ve seen ‘Anonymous Club’, the revealing documentary about Courtney Barnett that reached UK screens late last year, will have an idea of what to expect from ‘End Of The Day’, collecting as it does the instrumentals she used to soundtrack the film. Yet, to imagine an instrumental album from Courtney is to imagine Superman without his cape, so central to her appeal has her wry, knowing lyricism always been. And ‘End Of The Day’ certainly doesn’t sound, instrumentally, like anything we’ve heard from her before; it is spare, slow, sad, reflective. Even without the context of this being the final release on her Milk Records label, something the title hints at, this still has the sense of an ending about it; droning guitars lap against each other softly, as Courtney channels Brian Eno to create ambient soundscapes. Her next record will be fascinating because she is clearly navigating a crossroads in her life - leaving her label and homeland behind for Los Angeles, and reckoning with the changes in her life that success has bestowed upon her. But ‘End of the Day’ feels like a long, slow goodbye to her old life; elegant and, given the context, elegiac.