Rock and Roll to Break Your Writer's Block To

Courtney Barnett, the Melbourne indie-rock singer capable of turning such topics as real estate and elevator chitchat into droll, heartrending parables, was having coming up with the follow-up to her . Kurt Vile, the Philadelphia folkie whose free-ranging drawl and sparkling guitar lines , sent her a partly finished song. She heard it and invited him to her studio, on the other side of the world from where he was. The sessions became a tune, and then an album, of scraggly, lackadaisical, and compulsively, also comments on the collaboration that birthed it—resulting in a surprisingly moving reflection on the creative process itself.