“I was definitely in a less-than-positive headspace,” the 30-year-old tells me, sitting at the foot of one of the park’s massive palm trees, arms wrapped around her knees. When Barnett started writing the record’s lyrics not long after the release of 2015’s Sometimes I Sit and Think and Sometimes I Just Sit, she found herself starting more song ideas than she was finishing, running into writer’s block that stemmed largely from a desire to avoid examining those unpleasant feelings.

She eventually worked her way through, with some help from an antiquated relic. “I got given this typewriter by an old friend, so I made a goal to write one page a day on that to get random thoughts out,” she says. “People are like, ‘Ugh, typewriters are so wanky!’ But there’s a rhythm to it that I really enjoyed.”

The results of that measured exercise turned out to be more jarring than she expected. Though she had previously excelled at weaving witty anecdotes with minute details of her friends’ daily lives, Barnett now found herself fueled by the need to work through her own emotional life. A previous Courtney Barnett might have avoided these feelings, but—thanks in part the frustration and sadness inherent in surviving times like these—she opted instead to lean into the discomfort.

“I’d try to write a song about someone I was close to who was going through something, but it would turn into a total self-help book,” she says. “When I look back, it’s like, ‘Oh, wow, I was trying really hard to help myself get through something.’”

That “something” is present throughout Tell Me How You Really Feel, which doubles as a handbook for surviving the present moment. Topics ranging from toxic masculinity (“I try my best to be patient, but I can only put up with so much! Shit!/I’m not your mother, I’m not your bitch”) to the effort required to just get out of bed in the morning (“Waking up to another dismal day/You’ve got a ways to go, you oughta be grateful/Sometimes I get mad/It’s not half this bad/Pull yourself together, and just calm down”) are all filtered through Barnett’s signature wry outlook in a way that is simultaneously more biting, more direct, and more unguarded than anything the songwriter has done before.