Courtney Barnett was aware of the pressure.

Her new album would be her second, and second records are tough — they have a kind of prickly reputation in the music business because, well, they follow the first.

"Realistically, to ignore the idea of that sort of pressure is probably a bit silly," Barnett says from a rehearsal space in the Melbourne suburb of Richmond.

"But I just did my best to see it for what it was, and see the fears about those kinds of pressures as … not really holding any truth or importance.

"It's an idea and a construct."

For Barnett, the 30-year-old Sydney-born singer who lives in Melbourne, the first was successful. Really successful.

Sometimes I Sit and Think, And Sometimes I Just Sit, released in 2015 after a couple of EPs that earned a lot of buzz, garnered Barnett a Grammy nomination for Best New Artist (she lost to Meagan Trainor), won the Australian Music Prize, ended up on numerous best-of-2015 lists around the world and contributed to her being nominated for eight ARIAs (three of which she won).

It heralded the arrival of smart new voice in Australian songwriting: witty and self-deprecating, with lines about small moments that illustrated larger truths, the music catchy enough to grab you but not scrubbed of its idiosyncrasies.

A writer at Salon called her "the new Bob Dylan," and it didn't feel all that out of place.

Courtney Barnett describes herself as "mostly medium-tempered, and pacifist ... [seeing] the best in everyone." ( Double J: Paul Donoughue )

She did experience periods of writer's block this time around, and feelings of inadequacy she says she has dealt with since childhood.

"That kind of, 'You're not good enough, you can't write songs, everyone thinks you can write songs but you can't', etcetera etcetera," she says.

Barnett's wife, the musician Jen Cloher, noticed that. She said Courtney's mindset is captured in the title of one of the songs she wrote during that period, Self Doubt And A General Lack of Self Confidence.

"I definitely saw her go through periods of being really creatively blocked and unsure of herself," Cloher says.

This month, Barnett will release that second record, Tell Me How You Really Feel, to a global audience expecting big things, expecting a one-upping of what was offered the first time around.

So, again: pressure.

Sympathising with the internet's Nameless and Faceless

Nameless, Faceless, the first taste of the new record, appeared in March, a three-minute piece of jangly guitar pop that took aim at the misogynistic culture of online debate, much of it anonymised.

The spark for the song, Barnett says, was a quote attributed to Canadian novelist Margaret Attwood, whose book The Handmaid's Tale has become a popular TV series.

Sorry, this audio has expired Courtney Barnett explains the creative process behind Nameless Faceless.

"Men are afraid that women will laugh at them," Attwood wrote in a 1983 essay about gender relations. "Women are afraid that men will kill them."

"It jumped out because at first it's kind of funny and then it's really not funny," the singer told triple j's Linda Marigliano recently.

"That whole flip goes around in your head in like half a second."

In the song, the protagonist appears to be sympathising with her abusers.

Don't you have anything better to do I wish that someone could hug you Must be lonely Being angry, feeling over-looked

The viewpoint feels fitting for Barnett, who describes herself as, "mostly medium-tempered, and pacifist … [seeing] the best in everyone, always trying to see two sides of the story".

"I think that a lot of the song was me trying to, in a way, understand where the behaviour comes from," she says.

"I was just trying to wrap my head around it, because it kind of doesn't make sense … where violent and misogynistic behaviour stems from, where it is born, and how it grows and how it can start as verbal and turn into physical violence."

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In the past, she said, a lot of her writing had leaned towards sarcasm, and away from over-earnestness, calling the act of making light of something in song one of "self-defence".

"So it probably fluctuated [between sarcasm and earnestness] … and then I realised that it was not a laughing matter at all, so it was hard to stick with it, the sarcasm."

'I just need to scream about this thing because it's ridiculous'

Cloher has taken a similarly political turn recently.

Her most recent self-titled album was personal, but also dealt with the debate over gay marriage legislation, the Australian dream, and gender inequality.

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Does Cloher's work rub off on Barnett?

"We're very different people," Barnett says.

"Jen is really strong and opinionated and not afraid — well, everyone is afraid, but she looks past the fear and stands up for what she believes in.

"So, we have the same moral and political views but we express them in different ways, and I think that we have both taught each other a whole lot of lessons in that kind of area."

Barnett suggests there was also an inevitability to the more political nature of songs like Nameless, Faceless.

"I think that the times have brought an extra level of desperation out of people, of just trying to shake people up.

"And it's maybe stuff that you wouldn't have said so blatantly before, for whatever reason, suddenly, people are just like: 'F*** it, I just need to scream about this thing because it's ridiculous'."

Cloher agrees, saying she and Barnett are part of a community of socially conscious artists in Melbourne who realise that, "As world politics have become more and more concerning", artists need to step outside of their sometimes-privileged experiences.

Melbourne musician Gareth Liddiard, of The Drones and Tropical F*** Storm, talked recently about it becoming more difficult for musicians to affect political or cultural change the way they did in decades previous because of the polarisation of public debate — the idea that, in 2018, we are all just speaking to our own tribes.

"I think a lot of the point of music and sharing stories is breaking that empathy barrier so that other people of slightly different opinions can understand," Barnett said.

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Not all of the record is political. Other songs feel like examinations of modern life as you enter your thirties and build solid intimate or community ties.

But Barnett does feel a responsibility, as "a person of privilege with a microphone and a stage", to talk about weighty issues.

"I think I have always been a bit scared of the kind of ego or preachy side that can go with that, and the kind of self-righteousness and not understanding, not being fully aware of situations," she says.

"But I think that is just my own issue of feeling dumb, feeling not smart enough, and uninformed."

An 'exceptionally hard-working musician'

It's in comments like that — and in the general tendency towards sarcasm in her work — that you can sense, in Barnett, a vein of insecurity.

But Dan Luscombe, who played guitar on the record and helped produce it, said that idea was not his experience.

"Courtney, for all of the allusions to that lack of confidence or self-belief, I must say, at the time in the studio, just felt pretty positive about it all and very relaxed," he said.

He described an "exceptionally hard-working musician" who brought to the studio a "phone book"-sized notepad of lyrics and prose from which to draw.

"She is always writing lyrics right up to the point she sings them into the mic," he says.

"I think she thrives under that pressure in a lot of ways."

Cloher says to watch Barnett play guitar — appearing to not try but still being "mesmerising" — is an example of when she is in her element.

Eventually, during the writing process for Tell Me How You Really Feel, Barnett found all that external stuff — the Grammy nomination, the critical praise — didn't mean much, "because [the writing process] is so internal".

"That true satisfaction only comes from actually feeling it yourself," she says.

"The external stuff kind of wipes away."

Tell Me How You Really Feel is out May 18 via Milk! Records/Remote Control