On ‘Bright Future’, Big Thief’s Adrianne Lenker proves herself once again to be one of the greatest folk songwriters of recent years
The sound is melancholic, cosy and country-tinged and fits snugly together as a cohesive project. The record opens with ‘Real House’, a meditative track, with haunting, dissonant piano chords and Lenker’s voice bare and fragile. Her lyrics are much more literal than we’re used to, not the abstract poetry we’ve come to expect. This is not to say this album is not poetic; her bluntness is accessible, emotional and incredibly refreshing – a different form of poetry.
“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”
After this brutally sad opener, the album takes its first country turn with the charming and wonderful ‘Sadness As A Gift’. This track has a quality that only the very best folk songs do: it feels like it has existed forever. The twangy guitars, strings and vocal harmonies feel nostalgic and familiar, like friends sitting round a campfire.
In fact, the production of ‘Bright Future’ does seem to have been more collaborative than Lenker’s last album ‘Songs’. This time around, she linked with three close friends, Hakim, Davidson, and Runsteen in her analogue forest studio for several days. Like all of her and Big Thief’s music, the album has a gorgeously warm texture to it, no doubt thanks to the analogue equipment and natural setting.
Later, we have a visit from an old friend. Cosily fitted in the tracklist is the original recording of ‘Vampire Empire’, previous Big Thief single and instant fan-favourite. I absolutely love the way Lenker repurposes Big Thief songs and vice-versa across her discography, with this version more stripped back, lively and jittery.
Adrianne Lenker’s writing on this album is simple, but just as beautiful as any of other work. At the odd moment, her experimentations are less interesting than previous projects, such as on ‘Evol’. This track, while cleverly written with its backwards play on words, seems more forced than similar more subtle experimentations on a track like ‘anything’.
It is at its most fragile that this album shines. ‘Cell Phone Says’ works as a more conventional ballad, with Lenker’s voice warbling over a simple finger-picked guitar. Her ability to craft seemingly effortlessly beautiful tracks such as this is astounding.
On ‘Donut Seam’, she continues this theme, with incredibly romantic lyrics and beautiful unison vocals on the chorus. The track highlights just what is so special about ‘Bright Future‘; it combines the sparseness of Lenker’s solo material with the collaborative family energy of Big Thief, finding a perfectly balanced middle ground.
As the album closer, first single ‘Ruined’ takes on a new emotional devastation, somehow more crushing in context than it was as a standalone track. With only wooden piano chords and Lenker’s voice, it is one of her rawest and brutally honest tracks to date.
“Until I’m brave enough to call you
I just fall through every time
I wish I’d waved when I saw you
I just watched you passing by”
A complete change in pace from the usual complex and strangely-tuned guitars, the closer forces us to hang on to every word, feeling the complicated devastation of a relationship in real time. It works so satisfyingly as a parallel to the opener, bringing the album snugly to a close.
Originally published for CLUNK Magazine
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