Courtney Barnett to close Milk! Records: ‘I’m still coming to terms with it’

Courtney Barnett knows what she wants to talk about – but doesn’t quite know how to say it yet.

We meet on an unseasonably sunny winter’s day in Melbourne. This September, she will release ‌End of the Day, an album made with Stella Mozgawa of Warpaint to score Danny Cohen’s 2021 documentary about Barnett, Anonymous Club.

This will be Barnett’s first instrumental record. It will also be the final release on Milk! Records, the label Barnett started in 2012.

After more than 10 years, 60 releases and two best independent label awards from the Australian Independent Record Labels Association, Milk! will close up shop this year.

“The title of [the record] is fitting,” Barnett says. We’re sitting in a sun-drenched cafe, our fingers slick with butter as we pick croissants apart. “I don’t have a soundbite yet, of what to say.” She glances over her shoulders conspiratorially, saying she feels like a spy talking about it in public. “It just felt like the right time.”

In 2012, a 24-year-old Barnett – then a largely unknown DIY artist – doodled the image of a bottle tipped on its side. In the puddle it left behind were the words “Milk! Records”. At the time, there was just the one record: her debut EP, I’ve Got a Friend called Emily Ferris. She had borrowed money to make some CDs and hoped the logo would help to legitimise the operation.

“There was no other support or money,” she says. “The only thing was the logo.”

In just a few years, there were plenty more reasons for Barnett’s work to be taken seriously. Avant Gardener, a track on her second EP, received a wave of critical and popular attention internationally. Her debut LP won four Arias and earned her the Australian music prize, and a nomination at the Grammy and Brit awards.

As her solo career won Barnett a global audience, Milk! was becoming a mainstay of Melbourne’s music scene, best known for the lyrically rich songwriting, tender and intimate pop, and new-generation jangle of artists such as the Finks, East Brunswick All Girls Choir, Evelyn Ida Morris, Loose Tooth, Hachiku and Jade Imagine.

Musician Jen Cloher, then Barnett’s partner, released their music on the label, and started nurturing early-career artists; soon they were splitting tasks, and running Milk! together. “Somebody referred to me as creative director and Jen as label manager,” Barnett says. “It was so DIY … We were just trying to get things done. And making it up as we went.” When their relationship ended in 2018, Cloher continued running the label for another year, before handing over the reins.

The label’s artists were a tight-knit cadre, sharing bills at the Milk! residency shows (where a roster of mystery artists would perform to sell-out crowds) and on one another’s tours. They played annual Christmas party gigs, recorded covers of each other’s work, and collaborated with other indie labels. I first interviewed Barnett in 2015; in 2022, I wrote a short biography for the label, to celebrate its 10th anniversary. Milk!, I had learned by then, was a community in every sense of the word.

For Barnett, who moved to Melbourne from Hobart after finishing uni in 2008, that community was a lifeline. “It took me a long time to make friends and start playing music here,” she says. “I didn’t know how to do it or where to go. When I started making friends with other musicians it was like, you know, ‘I’ll play your show if you play my show.’ [Starting the label] was my attempt to make that space and support each other.”

“I think because it was so important for me in those early years, it was really hard to let go of.”

Meeting Cloher as part of a mentoring program was a portal to an otherwise unattainable musical world for Barnett, who credits Cloher as instrumental to her confidence. “My self-esteem was so low then, and it was just nice to have people to look up to. It was so important to me. I really looked up to Jen.”

Barnett’s decision to close her label might come as a surprise to fans; less so for those who know what goes into making one run.

The financial concerns were persistent and Covid restrictions – which hit Melbourne the hardest of Australia’s capitals – amplified them. “I feel like that was our constant: how do we make money? How do we sell T-shirts to make money?,” she says. “It’s fun, but it’s also tiring.”

For Barnett, this is not just the end of a business. Running an independent, DIY and extremely Melbourne label has been fundamental to her life and public image, as much an identifier as a job; after a decade as a Melbourne musician known for her lyricism, she is now based out of LA and releasing a record without words. It’s a time of transition.

“A year ago or maybe even six months ago, thinking about [closing it] would’ve been so impossible and so difficult and I would’ve resisted. One day I literally just woke up and my mind had changed.” (It’s not unusual for Barnett to make decisions like this. “I used to smoke daily and then one day I just was like, ‘I’m quitting.’”)

She was nervous to tell Milk!’s artists, but the conversations with them “were actually amazing”.

“I’ve been doing a lot of therapy in the last year. Normally I’d be so uncomfortable with any sort of … not confrontation, but any sort of important conversation. There’s this deep-seated guilt about letting people down.

“But I think nearly everyone was just like, ‘I totally get it … I don’t even know how you guys do it.’”

Milk! always prided itself on being artist-friendly (“probably to its detriment a little bit,” she laughs) and all of its artists will retain all the rights to their music. “We’re basically making it as easy and clean as possible”, Barnett says. “It’s nice to just be able to say, ‘Go and make your next amazing thing.’”

Ben O’Connor is co-founder of another Melbourne indie label, Chapter Music, which celebrated its 30th anniversary last year. Milk!, he said, will be missed.

“It’s sad but it’s not really surprising. Running an indie label is so much work and often for very little return,” he says. “I’ve always been so touched by what Milk! have done [for Melburne’s music scene], and they’ll be missed.”

It’s fitting, in a way, that ‌End of the Day will close the chapter on this period of Barnett’s career. It’s the score to a film that shows her between tours, camped out, sleeping, and, at times, on the mezzanine level of the Milk! warehouse. The label not only offered her legitimacy and community, but also, for a time, a roof over her head, I point out.

“It’s hard watching those moments,” she says. “It was just such a big part of … my whole life.”

“I’m still coming to terms with the end of it … But I’m letting go of that [guilt] feeling. It’s like that idea of looking after yourself so you can look after someone else. That reverse selfishness – you can’t love someone ‘til you love yourself – that kind of idea.”

After a decade of being attached to her label and city, Barnett will tie up a few loose ends at Milk! and then return to LA, where she’s excited to indulge solely in her own creative output.

“I’m so deep in making new music … I just wanna make the best album that I’ve ever made. We haven’t talked about [shopping it to new labels]. It’s kind of nice to not know.”

• End of the Day is available to preorder here