by Zak Mercado (@ciaoguaglione)
Adrianne Lenker is one of contemporary American folk music’s poets in residence. Between her song writing in Big Thief and her solo project, she manages to create worlds that feel so familiar, but then intertwine them with transcendentalist romanticism, rendering these views slightly more esoteric and impalpable. Her “solo” project has always seemed slightly more hushed and, perhaps, more free flowing than her work in Big Thief. Absent is the electric guitar. The same is true on her latest release Bright Future. On this album, she mixes in a new set of players on the piano, additional vocals, additional guitar work, and sparse percussion.
Lenker taps into melancholy, honesty, and occasional silliness in breezy ways. The album opens with “Real House.” Whether in character or her honest experience, a relationship among family members, but, particularly, a child and a mother, is revealed. It has the muted brutal, poignant, and heartbreaking sincerity of Sufjan Stevens’ Carrie and Lowell or Michigan records. Events are recounted with the emotional force of a Raymond Carver story. The record is full of these narrations, but Lenker is a poet. A real deal poet. “You show me/understanding, patience and pleasure/time and attention, love without measure,” she sings on “Free Treasure,” her voice accompanied by two acoustic guitars. The words seem plain, and the rhyme feels familiar, but taking a step back, there’s much to ruminate upon.
Last year, Big Thief released their single “Vampire Empire.” The version on this record is just as lusty and potent, with sentiments of fulfillment and disappointment in romantic matters. This rendition is looser, untethered — the front porch jam version. It feels honest and playful. Two of the deep cuts are magical, simple songs as Lenker shows great comfort in simplicity: her voice, acoustic guitars, and space. Even though “Cell Phone Says” and “Donut Seam” keep a tight pace and tempo, what’s absent in the recording is what’s blatantly present. “Oh, giver of empathy/It is a gift so bitter that you brought to me,” she sings. The explanation of who is giving the gift is only revealed by the gift and its contents. Lenker doles out a little bit of humor on “Donut Seam,” in the title only. The lyrical content meditates on swimming in a body of water before it’s too late — nature and the climate always on the mind.
Piecing together all of the poetry and narrative on the record, the overarching themes of nature and cosmos, bodies, objects, relationships, both romantic and otherwise, begin to blur and merge; “You open up like a flower;” “How about the moon looking back, Saying ‘Glad you’re here’/when we’re together only one thing moves;” “On the wings of moths and dragonflies/through the morning and evening, their sunset my sunrise/let them come to me like the breath I’m takin’;” “body like a bat in flight;” “I trip on my shoes and I trip on my shirt, get caught on the dirt in the yard;” and “I feel god here and there.” There is a sense of devotion and a relationship with nature and the universe. It feels like Transcendentalism, but perhaps there’s something beyond that. Some of the lyrics reveal a devotion to nature and a lover, like a Transcendentalist Song of Solomon. The object of affection is both carnally desired but also the wistful awe of nature and its interaction with the human body. Not unlike Walt Whitman walking nude near or into flowing water in the woods in Song of Myself (“I am mad for it to be in contact with me,” he says), Lenker’s meditations recognize nature on an intimate level.