Courtney Barnett walked out onto the Agora stage on Tuesday (August 11, 2026) night in an all-white jumpsuit and got straight to work. The band opened with “Stay In Your Lane” and “City Looks Pretty” back-to-back, setting the tone for the night. This wasn’t going to be a quiet night of indie shoegazing. She was there to rock, and rock she did!
Barnett is on tour promoting her latest album. She wrote it after leaving Melbourne for Los Angeles and watching her longtime label, Milk! Records, which she’d co-founded, shut down. The album is called ‘Creature of Habit,‘ but the songs are anything but predictable. This is a louder, more electric record than 2021’s hushed ‘Things Take Time, Take Time,‘ and that especially holds true watching them live.
If there was any doubt Barnett is a punk rocker at heart, she squashed that doubt entirely. She shredded on her guitar, and even songs like “Avant Gardener,” which is a chill album track that she sort of talks her way through in the studio version, turned into something that rocked live. That is probably one of her more known songs, and she busted it out surprisingly early. It speaks to how much faith she has in the new material. The instinct paid off again at the finish, when the encore closed with “Pedestrian at Best” and “Nobody Really Cares If You Don’t Go to the Party,” both of which were far from indie rock and more like punk songs by the time the band was done with them.
CHECK OUT CLEVEROCK’S EXCLUSIVE PHOTOS FROM THE SHOW!
The new record, her fourth album and her first in five years, got the bulk of the set list. Nine of its ten songs turned up in the main set, including “Mantis,” “Same,” “Great Advice,” “Site Unseen,” and “Wonder,” plus a genuine highlight in “Sugar Plum,” whose chorus the crowd shouted back at her. “One Thing at a Time” closed the main set, and the tenth and last ‘Creature of Habit’ song, “Mostly Patient,” was saved for a touching solo moment in the encore, so the whole album got a spot in the show, spread across the night rather than played straight through.
The band was a tight three-piece, which was all they needed. Drummer Stella Mozgawa (of Warpaint, and a co-producer on the new record) and longtime bassist Bones Sloane. She didn’t say much between songs. At one point she asked how everyone was, then told the room they were great singers, and that was close to the extent of the banter. But don’t mistake her quiet demeaner as disinterest. It’s not. She was razor focused. She’d rather let a song like “Elevator Operator” do the talking, and with Mozgawa driving it, it said plenty. It’s a steady, insistent groove on the album. Live, you felt that beat in your bones.
The catalog dips went deep, too. “History Eraser” goes all the way back to her early recordings, and “Canned Tomatoes (Whole),” was a genuine rarity from 2012 she snuck into the encore. That hadn’t been played live since 2017. “Another Beautiful Day” got its live debut a few songs earlier, right before the crowd got the one it came for: “Depreston,” which killed, exactly like the hit it is.
The set was a succinct but powerful ninety minutes / twenty-two songs. It was an economical show, old and new were next to each other all night, and both showed the range she can put out live.
© 2025 CleveRock Music Portal. A PROUD SHAPE CLEVELAND PRODUCTION