COURTNEY Barnett in active wear. It’s hard to imagine.

“I’ve only really started exercising in the last year which feels great, it’s great for my mental health,” she says, glowing more than usual at Milk! Records HQ in Coburg. She walked into the room humming a song before clocking me. She has a lightness to her.

“My friend was like ‘We should go running’ and I said (deadpan) ‘I’m not a runner’. Then I just gave it a go.”

Initially, the tousle-haired, 30-year-old artist just wore her regular clothes to jog. We’re talking Dick Diver T-shirt, weathered jeans and a flannel shirt. A friend delicately picked her up on it when she saw Barnett pounding the pavement like she was sprinting away from a stage — running like she’d stole something.

“I just took off the other day down the street dressed in my ‘sporty clothes’, not dressed like this,” she assures me, pointing up to her black wharfie beanie.

“I listen to Peaches first album really loud in my headphones, Fatherf---er. I feel so good afterwards. I’ve been doing gym stuff too.” Next stop F45 Training.

For Barnett, this isn’t a Sporty Spice phase, fitness is her jam now.

As she said, it helps keep her sane.

Imagine going from serving pints to obstreperous revellers at the Northcote Social Club to everyone fussing over you because you’re nominated for Best New Artist in 2015 at the Grammy Awards in Los Angeles and “OMG your songs mean so much to me and you’re super-nice can I have a selfie with you and can you record a message for my sick dog?”

Your head would be spinning.

Barnett self-released her EP I’ve Got a Friend Called Emily Ferris on Milk! Records, got some heat, then put out The Double EP: A Sea Of Split Peas with modern masterpieces Avant Gardener, History Eraser and Lance Jr.

Her debut album Sometimes I Sit and Think and Sometimes I Just Sit won the $30,000 Australian Music Prize, she picked up a bunch of ARIA Awards and ended up singing Depreston live on Ellen with Michelle Obama clapping along.

Then a period of writer’s block crept in (poignantly captured on recent song Crippling Self-Doubt and a General Lack Of Confidence) that led her to make an album with Kurt Vile (yep, Kurt and Courtney) titled Lotta Sea Lice. This freed her up and led to her second album, Tell Me How You Really Feel, which debuted at No. 3 on the ARIA charts. The singles have done tidy work. It’s a total grower.

“We’ve done Nameless Faceless, Need a Little Time, City Looks Pretty and Sunday Roast. Those last two were for Record Store Day, they’re anti-singles.

“I think we’re going to do Charity next. I love playing that song.”

Barnett and her band played Charity last week on Jimmy Kimmel live Concert Series.

“I’m starting to write other songs anyway. I think it’s all coming out which is good,” she says, those mischievous eyes (left green, right blue) lighting up.

“It’s just me sitting in coffee shops in Melbourne, writing. Drinking lots of coffee. I always do everything as differently as I can, it keeps everything fresh.”

Paul Kelly has recently been doing the same, getting at songs on the hop, using all sorts of strategies to devastating effect. He’s a big Barnett fan. The two did a cover of Archie Roach’s Charcoal Lane when she was starting out.

“It always starts as a huge puddle. I go through old voice memos and old journals. Then I remember I have all these great unfinished songs and either work on them and slowly bring them back to life. There’s lots of new piano ones and weird little drum machines. Then when I finally get around to making the album it’ll be a whole other thing.”

Her band’s become another thing. They’ve gone from a trio — who were sometimes a foursome with three blokes and Barnett — to a quartet with gender equality.

“We’ve got Katie Harken on guitar now, she’s British, she was on tour with Sleater Kinney as a floating member and we just hit it off in Boston.”

Barnett also plays in her partner Jen Cloher’s band. Quite a weapon in her arsenal. Cloher helps her run Milk! Records.

I mention to Courtney that Jen says she “lives with her wife Courtney Barnett in Melbourne” on her Wikipedia page. “I don’t know whether Jen does her Wiki page,” she says evasively. Now that gay marriage is legal will Jen and Courtney prove the internet correct?

“We have no plans to get married. I’m happy it was made legal though,” she says. Cloher’s Wiki page has been updated to say “partner.”

Barnett has Cloher’s back and vice versa. Courtney was asked to curate Sonic City Festival

“I asked for Beyonce,” she says, eyes gleaming with cheek. “And Janelle Monae and Solange. I knew I wouldn’t get everyone, they didn’t have a huge budget.”

She’s got Cloher, Laura Jean (who has put out one the albums of the year, Devotion, through Chapter Music, like you didn’t know) and a few other Antipodean besties on the bill. Barnett’s tapped Polica, Let’s Eat Grandma, Ryley Walker, Eleanor Friedberger, SASAMI, Hilary Woods, Emma Ruth Rundle, Nilüfer Yanya, Goat Girl, The Courtneys, Dream Wife, Hachiku and others.

“I gave them the list, they did the rest.”

Like all of us, the Sanguine Southpaw Slayer™ is a work in progress.

Barnett’s up-and-down inner workings all come out in the wash.

Interviewing her is a strange experience, she’s cagey for good reason: she’s already given us everything in her stream-of-consciousness observations and crisp, moving vignettes.

She writes and writes into notepads and takes voice memos and on latest album Tell Me How You Really Feel she used a typewriter to slow her mind down a tad.

She sings on Charity “You don’t have to pretend you’re not scared, everyone else is just as terrified.” On Hopelessness she quips “You know it’s okay to have a bad day.”

The rate of bad days to good days is “pretty much the same as this time last year,” she tells me.

One of the finest lines on the record is in City Looks Pretty: “The city takes pity on your lonely soul, there ain’t heavenly prose to fill that hole.” The Bob Dylan and Patti Smith comparisons are well founded.

“I like singing that line, yerrr,” she says, happy we have moved on from her private life. “There’s lots of little snippets that have layers and funny in-jokes and personal stories. It all adds together in that moment to tell a whole other story. Lyrics change depending on the day and on the mood … which I think is sort of fun,” she adds, her shoulders lifting.

The death of Eurydice Dixon rocked Victoria, then Australia, then the tremors were felt internationally.

The chorus of Tell Me How Your Really Feel’s opening single Nameless, Faceless became a terrible truth. She sings: “I wanna walk through the park in the dark/ Men are scared that women will laugh at them/ I wanna walk through the park in the dark/ Women are scared that men will kill them.”

“We were in Europe. I got a thing on my phone, it was a news update,” she says, her wide eyes become wider. “We were following the story, Dave (Mudie) lives in Carlton, he texted his girlfriend. We had to play the song the next day for a TV thing and all the news was coming in.

“It effected me and everyone, we were all talking about it. The fact we were playing that song wasn’t lost on us. It was really ahhh,” she trails off. “Then someone showed me my lyrics. It was so powerful that the words came across, they’re not even my words, they’re Margaret Atwood’s words. Not that my lyrics helped any situation,” she says, the interview grinds to a halt. Words feel superfluous

The jauntiness of the song offsets its macabre themes, it’s like Supergrass and The Goodies covering Hole.

“That’s the silliness of that song. The seemingly happy lyrics with the really dark lyrical message.

“It was hard to get the tone right for the clip. I never wanted it to underplay the message. The song is so comical sounding, it’s a huge juxtaposition to what it’s about. I didn’t want the video to undermine it. Having the animation was a way you could say a similar thing, I just didn’t want it to f--- with the message.”

Barnett can’t walk far without fans flocking.

She was star-spotted in Central Park in New York on her first tour there, still at the embryonic phase of her international career.

“I love all that stuff. A girl in New Zealand asked me to sign her arm at a meet and greet then later that night after the show I saw her arm all red with the cling wrap and I was like ‘Hey you got a tattoo!?’” she laughs freely.

“I was like, ‘Ahhh, it’s a bit messy’. People send really lovely letters and little gifts, little drawings, little creations. Anyone who takes the time to write a f--king letter with real thoughts and emotions; it’s really nice. I wrote back to a whole bunch (of people) the other day. It took me a while. Some were nearly a year old. I’m not very good with deadlines.

“It’s a beautiful thing, people writing to me. I didn’t write any amazing essays, I just wanted to write something back as a small token of my appreciation. I don’t want to pat myself on the back.

“I wrote a letter once to Pennywise when I was a kid. I think I asked for some free stickers. They didn’t write back (laughs). I wrote a fan letter to Darren Hanlon once and he wrote back. It was before I became friends with him. I was stoked, I was so happy, he wrote me a postcard back. I invited him to a show I was doing at Edinburgh Castle.

“I was doing a residency there a couple of years ago. He wrote back a year later, he was on tour somewhere, it was from Gympie but he sent it from overseas.”

There’s shades of Marg Bouvier and Ringo Starr.

Barnett is a lifer.

Patti Smith personally asked her to support the NY punk poet on her final Australian tour last year. Now they’re tight.

“Friend is a strong word,” she says, forever pulling her head in. “I’d like to think that. She’s incredible. I saw her perform the other day in London.

“It was us, then Patti Smith then Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. We were side of stage, it was amazing. She’s 71 and she was f--king killing it.”

Who’s to say Our Courtney won’t be doing the same in 40 years?

You can be sure she’ll be dressed appropriately.