2024 - USA
Singer-Songwriter, Contemporary Folk
It’s always been about love. Songs, abysskiss, even Hours Were the Birds, she might have taken detours, but in the end what were looking at always was one person gliding over one thing. It’s always been about love. And Earth. Snow, fireflies, willow branches, blue skies, raspberries and leaves and milk and dogs. Love is earthly. And what Adrianne Lenker found with Bright Future is that love moves in the same ways as nature. With its cyclic seasons, it grows warm and it grows cold and every new season outdoes the last one while keeping the memory of it. « Dragonfly, the clouds are rolling by / The wind across my back, I feel the shiver / Drive around, live from town to town / To the ocean of your love, I am a river » she sings on No Machine. Filling our ears with her many words, Lenker uses poetry as a way to keep the conversation going. And her poetry is as thick and sensitive as the skin. Delving into her own vulnerability, she reveals all the memories she carries in order to keep the deathless machines away and always stay closer and closer to the leaves that grow and fall. « The whole world is dying / Don’t it seem like a good time for swimming / Before all the water disappears? » Because if love and seasons work the same, what will happen to love if we keep disrupting the seasons ?
« Now our love is dying / Don’t it seem like a good time for kissing? / One more kiss, one more kiss to last the years ». In Donut Seam, Earth’s death is aligned with Love’s death. And as they die together, Lenker proposes the same solution, to protect love so love protects us. But where does that belief come from ? Isn’t it blind, to trust love by all means and let it become the main architect of our humanity ? Isn’t love untrustworthy and cruel and violent ? On Fool, Lenker adopts a befuddled tone when trying to think about these questions. On one hand, she asks if « We could be friends ? You could love me through and through / If I were him / Would you be my family too? » and on the other, all she remembers are her family and friends’ success at love, not her own. « Tommy had twins / Kenna and Lu-y tied the knot / Zoë and B built their house on the spot » But with an unbreakable will, she doesn’t let that feeling win and ends the song with « I’ll love you till I die / Oh, what more can I possibly say ? » Through the bare melodies and angelic harmonies, Adrianne Lenker’s story is one of longing and fighting. Because through this terrible journey, it always seems like the cruelest words she sings are embalmed in a somptuous hang. And thats’ because, as she says on Already Lost, « shadows shatter at the edges of a smile ».
And although on the devastating opener Real House she sings that she’s « now thirty-one and I don’t feel strong », everything she does on Bright Future is a feat of strength. All the way, her poetry helps us see the other side of things, turning words into three-dimensional matter. For instance, Vampire Empire does here the reverse journey terminal paradise did back in 2019, when Lenker’s song grew in size to become a Big Thief song. Now Vampire Empire goes back to Lenker’s hands, and by losing some of its Big Thief power, it gains more sensitivity. « I wanted to see you naked, I wanted to hear you scream / I wanted to kiss your skin and your everything / I wanted to be your woman and I wanted to be your man », absolute devotion. But despite that, « You keep me inside out and you want the outside in / You spin me all around and then you ask me not to spin / You say you wanna be alone and then you want children ». Lenker ventures on both sides of the coin to better amplify the overwhelming power of love when it brings you at your most vulnerable. The song Evol perfectly outlines that philosophy, built on the concept of palindromes, where devil becomes lived, god becomes dog and love becomes evol, an homonym of « evil ».
And it’s that complex look that makes Adrianne Lenker’s power. In Real House, she reflects on her relationship with death. Remembering that « when I was seven I saw the first film that made me scared / And I thought of this whole world ending / I thought of dying unprepared ». And with that realization her life begins. She then recalls another memory, when she went to the hospital at 14 and "you" (probably her mother) held her hand « as they put the needle in me ». And right after she remarks, « I never saw you cry / Not until our dog died / And the whole family came back together / We held her body as they put the needle in her / And then I saw you cry ». What’s striking in these sublime and heartbreaking verses, is how important it was for the young Adrianne Lenker to see her mother cry. The first time she sings « I never saw you cry », it feels like she’s noticing an incoherence. If sadness is a mandatory part of this world, how come I never saw my mother cry ? So when her dog died, it both becomes the moment when she encounters death and the moment when this incoherence is washed away. Her mother cries. And that’s how sadness can become a gift, by accepting it’s a part of us. « You could write me someday, and I hope you will / We could see the sadness as a gift and still / Feel too heavy to old ».
If Bright Future is such a poignant album, it’s because it’s about acceptance, and how acceptance, paired with sadness, can help us love. « Oh, kiss so sweet, so fine / You could hear the music inside my mind / And you showed me a place I’ll find even when I’m old » There are some experiences that crawl under our skin so deep that we won’t ever get rid of them, for better or worse. That’s love. And if love is a vampire empire, if love opens the gate of our most treasured intimacy with the most care in order to reinvent our inner world and help it grow, it’s because we’re at our most vulnerable. And that’s why Adrianne Lenker is a songwriter like no other. By showcasing her own vulnerability in her poetry, she creates a comfortable environment for us to do so as listeners. Listening to her music makes us vulnerable. Then, just like love, Lenker’s poetry finds its way to our heart and help us grow. And maybe we’ll tell her, someday, how Bright Future felt like a kiss so fine that it brought the music inside our minds. And it showed us a place we’ll find even when we’re old. But that will only work if we agree that among the things we keep, the sadness can’t be washed away.
« Now our love is dying / Don’t it seem like a good time for kissing? / One more kiss, one more kiss to last the years ». In Donut Seam, Earth’s death is aligned with Love’s death. And as they die together, Lenker proposes the same solution, to protect love so love protects us. But where does that belief come from ? Isn’t it blind, to trust love by all means and let it become the main architect of our humanity ? Isn’t love untrustworthy and cruel and violent ? On Fool, Lenker adopts a befuddled tone when trying to think about these questions. On one hand, she asks if « We could be friends ? You could love me through and through / If I were him / Would you be my family too? » and on the other, all she remembers are her family and friends’ success at love, not her own. « Tommy had twins / Kenna and Lu-y tied the knot / Zoë and B built their house on the spot » But with an unbreakable will, she doesn’t let that feeling win and ends the song with « I’ll love you till I die / Oh, what more can I possibly say ? » Through the bare melodies and angelic harmonies, Adrianne Lenker’s story is one of longing and fighting. Because through this terrible journey, it always seems like the cruelest words she sings are embalmed in a somptuous hang. And thats’ because, as she says on Already Lost, « shadows shatter at the edges of a smile ».
And although on the devastating opener Real House she sings that she’s « now thirty-one and I don’t feel strong », everything she does on Bright Future is a feat of strength. All the way, her poetry helps us see the other side of things, turning words into three-dimensional matter. For instance, Vampire Empire does here the reverse journey terminal paradise did back in 2019, when Lenker’s song grew in size to become a Big Thief song. Now Vampire Empire goes back to Lenker’s hands, and by losing some of its Big Thief power, it gains more sensitivity. « I wanted to see you naked, I wanted to hear you scream / I wanted to kiss your skin and your everything / I wanted to be your woman and I wanted to be your man », absolute devotion. But despite that, « You keep me inside out and you want the outside in / You spin me all around and then you ask me not to spin / You say you wanna be alone and then you want children ». Lenker ventures on both sides of the coin to better amplify the overwhelming power of love when it brings you at your most vulnerable. The song Evol perfectly outlines that philosophy, built on the concept of palindromes, where devil becomes lived, god becomes dog and love becomes evol, an homonym of « evil ».
And it’s that complex look that makes Adrianne Lenker’s power. In Real House, she reflects on her relationship with death. Remembering that « when I was seven I saw the first film that made me scared / And I thought of this whole world ending / I thought of dying unprepared ». And with that realization her life begins. She then recalls another memory, when she went to the hospital at 14 and "you" (probably her mother) held her hand « as they put the needle in me ». And right after she remarks, « I never saw you cry / Not until our dog died / And the whole family came back together / We held her body as they put the needle in her / And then I saw you cry ». What’s striking in these sublime and heartbreaking verses, is how important it was for the young Adrianne Lenker to see her mother cry. The first time she sings « I never saw you cry », it feels like she’s noticing an incoherence. If sadness is a mandatory part of this world, how come I never saw my mother cry ? So when her dog died, it both becomes the moment when she encounters death and the moment when this incoherence is washed away. Her mother cries. And that’s how sadness can become a gift, by accepting it’s a part of us. « You could write me someday, and I hope you will / We could see the sadness as a gift and still / Feel too heavy to old ».
If Bright Future is such a poignant album, it’s because it’s about acceptance, and how acceptance, paired with sadness, can help us love. « Oh, kiss so sweet, so fine / You could hear the music inside my mind / And you showed me a place I’ll find even when I’m old » There are some experiences that crawl under our skin so deep that we won’t ever get rid of them, for better or worse. That’s love. And if love is a vampire empire, if love opens the gate of our most treasured intimacy with the most care in order to reinvent our inner world and help it grow, it’s because we’re at our most vulnerable. And that’s why Adrianne Lenker is a songwriter like no other. By showcasing her own vulnerability in her poetry, she creates a comfortable environment for us to do so as listeners. Listening to her music makes us vulnerable. Then, just like love, Lenker’s poetry finds its way to our heart and help us grow. And maybe we’ll tell her, someday, how Bright Future felt like a kiss so fine that it brought the music inside our minds. And it showed us a place we’ll find even when we’re old. But that will only work if we agree that among the things we keep, the sadness can’t be washed away.