After playing with various bands in Melbourne, Barnett used money that she had borrowed from her grandmother to start her own Milk Records label[2] and released her first EP, I've Got a Friend Called Emily Ferris (2012).

[3] The Double EP brought Barnett international critical acclaim, with the lead single, "Avant Gardener", named 'Best New Track' by Pitchfork in 2013.

[5] Barnett had spent a year writing songs for her album[6] but only showed them to her band a week before they were recorded in order to capture a "fresh" sound.

[9] Some early promo copies were distributed in Europe in mid-December 2014, and Barnett unveiled the album at the 2015 South by Southwest music festival in March and then embarked on a world tour beginning in Paris.

[12] In a review for AllMusic, Stephen Thomas Erlewine called it "invigorating", saying that it provided a "convincing argument that rock & roll doesn't need reinvention in order to revive itself.

"[24] Everett True wrote in The Guardian that the album improves upon each listen because "it's been a while since western rock music – let alone Melbourne's fiercely insular and often too-precious indie scene – has thrown up a songwriter and lyricist as intriguing, compelling and down-to-earth, yet surreal and morbidly funny, as Barnett.

"[17] In Cuepoint, Robert Christgau said Barnett's music has a "drive and focus" it did not have before, complemented by her passionate singing and a lyrical style reminiscent of John Prine and Jens Lekman but still "herself": "Formally, her songs are confessional, only they describe her material life and conflicted feelings acutely rather than dreamily, so that the songs occur in and are inflected by a deftly rendered physical and social world.