Adrianne Lenker, vocalist and co-author of the music of the prestigious American alternative group Big Thief (see Z. Kojić: Champions of the Dreaming Universe, "Vreme", March 2, 2022), she recorded a solo record of exceptional emotion, so to speak, "on the edge", which is not recorded every day. Riskily honest, vulnerable, alone with a guitar and friends, Lenkerova achieves the maturity reserved only for great creators. In the first six months of this year, Bright future is easily a contender among some of the strongest artistic statements we've heard.
Following in the footsteps of the greats outsider artist such as Daniel Johnson, Lenker reaches uncharted territory. Her songs reveal a heightened, childlike sensibility that does not suffer disappointment in the world. In them, without any protection, Adrianne indulges in the experiences of life and living, its beautiful and ugly sides.
This everyday ecstasy sets Lenker apart from the sea of "Joni Mitchell grandchildren" that have flooded the alternative music scene in recent years. Regardless of the confessional tone and despite the beauty of the melodies, similar to their great forerunner - only a few of them make music that rises to the level of universal importance... For such a thing, you still need to be an authentic poet, who recognizes in personal experience what concerns everyone. Adrianne Lenker did just that on her solo album Bright future giving a task to a whole new generation of singer-songwriters.
“I wanted so much for magic to be real”
(Real House)
The experiences discussed here are not borderline at all - when you put them on paper, they sound more like a list of general places. But life also consists of general places where we do not find our way. Here they are presented to us in a perfect melodramatic composition as a series of extreme experiences in which there are dangers that can break us. So on Bright future we encounter a dramatically direct and extremely moving description of a lifelong relationship with one's own mother (Real House), fatalistic partings with loved ones until yesterday (Sadness as a Gift i Donut Seam), youthful enthusiasm for unexpected love happiness permeated with embarrassment in front of one's own strong feelings (Fool i Ruined), giving in to a fluttering longing for love (No Machine i Cell Phone Says), searching for hidden meaning in words (Evol), and delight in the quiet beauty of untouched nature where you can find a deeper understanding of yourself (Free Treasure). All of this is shaped into an extremely romantic saga about a person's struggle with himself - to accept himself as he is and remain delighted with life as it is offered. That's why we always recognize her themes as our own.
Real House is certainly the most poignant song on Adrianna Lenker's sixth independent release. It's a series of snapshots from memories that connect her to her mom: the first trip to the hospital, the first movie that scared her, the first dog that died. From them, we learn a lot about her uprootedness and growing up from a caravan to the guest room of close relatives to cheap hotel accommodation, which are the environments in which she spent most of her youth... Until one day the family bought a "real house", where she lived in peace for four whole years - a period Lenkerova calls the only stable one she's ever had. That unraveled life path dictates her deep insecurity in relationships with people, which is the main theme of the entire album and which she confronts without holding back. Here, love for mother is synonymous with home and a sense of tranquility that she has never experienced and that is why she is forever searching for it. To this signatory, it seems that the sentiment of eradication is shared by all adults on the Internet and social networks today, and Bright future offers a statement recognizable to an entire generation.
The album was recorded during the fall of 2022 at Double Infinity Studio, located in the forest. The producer was a frequent collaborator Philip Weinrobe, and the musicians were discreetly accompanied by Nick Hakim, Matt Davidson and Josefin Runsteen. The aesthetics that they built together sonically was based on the idea of providing this atmospheric folk-country music with a natural flow, and everything was recorded from the beginning, without interruptions or repetitions - which was the only way to record these unbearably direct songs fairly.
“Where stars shine like tears
on the night’s face”
(Real House)
Bright future has the momentum of an intimate masterpiece - and although we shouldn't expect the modern age to give us records that resemble the great albums of the past, it should be said that the sea of sensibility that it offers Bright future it really reminds of a fragile openness Blue Joni Mitchell (1971) on the one hand, but also on reduced songs about street events played around the campfire with The Texas Campfire Tapes Michelle Shocked (1986). Somewhere halfway between these two musical crossroads, Adrianne Lenker found her expression from the heart, whose trembling in front of other people she so faithfully describes on her unique album, her best and most significant to date.
