★★★☆☆
If you’re looking for Courtney Barnett’s trademark sound (think: sparkling wit wed to the sort of slacker jangle that gets the heart pounding), then you might be disappointed by End Of The Day. This is very much not that record. In fact, this is languid and wordless, an instrumental work sourced from the musician’s 2021 biographical documentary Anonymous Club.
End Of The Day’s genesis lies in its creator’s third studio album, 2021’s Things Take Time, Take Time, when Barnett brought Warpaint’s Stella Mozgawa onboard to bring the songwriter’s new material to life.
The drummer added tasteful touches to the introspective material Barnett had been writing during the longueurs of lockdown and the team-up was so successful that Mozgawa not only played on the album but co-produced it too.
And so, when it came to scoring Anonymous Club, they capitalised on the momentum they had struck up. They watched director Danny Cohen’s final edit, with instruments close to hand, in the knowledge that incidental music would be required around the film’s bristling live footage. Improvisation became the order of the day, and you can feel it course through every bar.
There’s no doubt the approach takes its cue from Neil Young’s improvised soundtrack to Jim Jarmusch’s mid-90s acid western, Dead Man. There are even shades of Jarmusch’s SQÜRL side-project in these meditative passages also.
Rather than wrestling riffs from her reverb-rich guitar, Barnett scrapes her pick lazily for woozy strums and arpeggios, allowing Mozgawa’s moody OB-6 synthesizer to set the pace.
The compositions are shuffled, re-cut and recast from Anonymous Club to play as a seamless, 17-track amble. And a true amble it is. The melodies slip through your fingers and out of the mind, drifting away in the breeze. One track subsumes the next – and vica versa too – moving around like a musical lava lamp, deliberately fragmented and disjointed, in an exercise of strict economy and spontaneity.
It makes for a record that is high on mood but low on melody, and lower still on memorable melodies. Barnett harnesses a devout commitment to ambience and is successful in this aim.
By ditching killer couplets for sprawling sonic vistas, this is the articulate Australian in pure explorer mode; diving into the Outback of her mind for a meandering wander into tone and textures (you can practically feel the stoner vibes that surely filled the studio as they set these sounds down). It makes for a curious listening experience.
Neither pedestrian nor her best, End Of The Day is something ‘other’ for Courtney Barnett: an intriguing side-step made for unhurried, mellow minds. Somewhat paradoxically, it’s also a more rewarding listen the less you pay attention to it. Strange days indeed.
