Courtney Barnett has returned with the new single ‘Stay In Your Lane’. Check it out below.
The track, released today (October 15), marks the first new music from Barnett since her 2023 surprise instrumental album ‘End Of The Day’, and her 2021 LP ‘Things Take Time, Take Time’.
Arriving via Fiction Records, ‘Stay In Your Lane’ is propelled by a raucous guitar riff and Barnett’s signature drawl. “Gotta get this off my chest,” she sings in the chorus, “This never would’ve happened if I stayed in my lane, stayed the same way.”
It comes alongside a creepy video from filmmaker Alex Ross Perry, which sees Barnett in the centre of some kind of surgical ward, performing while wearing a blood-stained hospital gown. Other patients lounge around, wrapped in bandages and gazing ominously into the distance.
Check it out below.
Per a press release, the song “kicks off her next musical chapter”, of which further details will be announced soon.
It will follow ‘End of the Day’, which was built from 17 meditative improvisational tracks. The album was originally recorded as a score for the documentary Anonymous Club – a portrait of Barnett by Melbourne/Naarm-based director Danny Cohen that was three years in the making.
In a four-star review of her last studio album, ‘Things Take Time, Take Time’, NME wrote: “Though it lacks the more immediate bite of Barnett’s previous work, its softness gives it a more tender focus. True to title ‘Things Take Time, Time Time’s unshowy songs take hold more slowly, but Barnett’s small snatches of happiness grip you all the same.”
At the time of the record’s release, Barnett spoke to NME about how film had shaped her writing. “More and more, I’m influenced by films more than I am music. There’s such a different level of projection on film,” she said at the time. “I’m quite a visual person, and I enjoy being able to see people’s body language, actors’ body language. The very small moments that get captured on film.”
