| End of the Day | |
| Type: | film |
| Artist: | Courtney Barnett |
| Cover: | Courtney Barnett - End of the Day.png |
| Recorded: | 2021 |
| Length: | 40:16 |
| Label: | |
| Producer: |
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| Prev Title: | Things Take Time, Take Time |
| Prev Year: | 2021 |
End of the Day is an instrumental album by Australian musician Courtney Barnett, originally composed as the film score for the 2021 documentary film about Barnett, Anonymous Club. It was released on 8 September 2023 through Milk! Records and Mom + Pop Music. Barnett improvised the album alongside drummer Stella Mozgawa as they watched director Danny Cohen's final edit of Anonymous Club.[1]
While originally conceived as the score to the 2021 biographical documentary film Anonymous Club that followed Barnett, the album was reworked to form a single piece of music. Barnett and drummer Stella Mozgawa's "one guiding principle" as they recorded the score was "nothing too maudlin, obvious, or instructive, nothing to tell the future audience how they should be feeling about Barnett's life onscreen".[1]
End of the Day received a score of 66 out of 100 on review aggregator Metacritic based on five critics' reviews, indicating "generally favorable" reception. Uncut commented that the album is "held together by a unifying drone" and a "welcome if unusual addition to Barnett's catalogue", while The Line of Best Fits Amaya Lim stated that while Barnett "previously depended on frank and revealing lyrical turns to convey emotion, she here demonstrates that she can do the same with only her instrument" and "proves that she is a master at her craft, striking gold again with her new foray into scoring".
Mojo wrote that "in places it verges on doodling, as if Barnett is endlessly tuning her guitar, but tracks such as Intro or Tiver sound darkly majestic, like deep, drifting hollowed-out Americana". Logan Walker of The Skinny felt that "as a standalone record, End of the Day does not always justify its existence. Some tracks are simply too empty, leaving a noticeable divide between audience and artist".