Courtney Barnett
End Of The Day
3.9/5 stars
Videos by American Songwriter
On Friday (September 8), Australian-born songwriter and performer Courtney Barnett released her newest album, the 17-track instrumental LP, End Of The Day. The album, which was written in 2021 and was included in the score for the film Anonymous Club, got new attention from Barnett a year later in 2022 and the result is lovely. She remixed it, re-ordered the tracks, and turned the LP into something one might hear in a pristine massage parlor in heaven.
The instrumental songs were created not long after Barnett had completed her then-latest album, Things Take Time, Take Time. Barnett decided to work on more ambient tracks when she met up with filmmaker Danny Cohen, who made Anonymous Club, a doc all about Barnett. The film needed a score. And so Barnett had the makings of it and gave over to it.
But when one creates an instrumental album like this, what’s the impetus? And what’s the result? To answer those questions, we must dive into the work. From a bird’s eye view, it would seem that, for Barnett, the general ambition for the album was to create a tone of relaxation through somewhat dissonant tones and sounds.
In nature, for example, everything one hears when in a field or floating down a river isn’t meant to weave together like an intricate pop song or even a symphony. And yet, it somehow does anyway. In unison, harmoniously. Well, Barnett plays the role of Mother Nature, to some degree at least, on End Of The Day by sewing together low hums, bending guitar riffs, and percussive sounds that resemble melted metal dripping down onto a frozen lake.
One can play End Of The Day and forget it’s on. In the same way as your imagination is constantly whirring, either quickly or meanderingly, so too is Barnett’s modest yet magnificent record. It matches your psyche somehow. You could even drift off to sleep with it, with the volume on low.
On the album’s title track, Barnett plays partial chords on an electric guitar that shimmer and boom out like bells from a monastery. On the 10th track, “Intro,” she plays with bending notes and the result is like a deity wagging her finger at you. On “Like Water,” it’s as if Jaws the shark comes to pay a visit. It’s amazing how much personality pensive music can have, even if you’re expecting it.
Some, like musician Dean Evenson, believe that nature itself has a tone, a vibration. It’s low, hushed, almost imperceptible. But Barnett’s new LP seems to bring those sensibilities to the light, to the cultural forefront. Whether Barnett has studied the theory that Evenson espouses or not, the truth is that it’s in her work here. Clear as day.
Photo by Pooneh Ghana / Courtesy Grandstand Media
