Story Lee
Listening to Adrianne Lenker can feel like reading through her diary. In both her solo music and her band Big Thief, Lenker is known for her signature sincerity, writing vulnerable and poetic lyrics about personal details of herself and her life.
She pairs raw honesty with lyrical and vocal nuance to uniquely capture little parts of the human condition on her latest album, “Bright Future,” released on March 22.
Lenker’s first solo release since 2020’s critically acclaimed “songs,” her new record chronicles the pain and joy of healing from heartbreak with earnest tenderness.
Often, Lenker captures grief, love, heartbreak and beauty in her lyrics. In this sense, “Bright Future” is no different. Much of the album deals with finding beauty in emotional discomfort, most directly in its lead single, “Sadness As a Gift.”
“Sadness As a Gift” portrays the most difficult part of healing: acceptance. Lenker drifts in the liminal space between heartbreak and moving on, clinging onto love for her ex-partner and a hope that things could turn out differently. She explicitly says in verse three that “it’s time to let go,” but she is unable to pull herself out of ruminating on what they had.
Another diary entry of a song is “Free Treasure,” which delivers us a portrait of Lenker learning to ground herself in everyday beauty. Lenker details of a riverbed in the same awe as she sings of a loved one that she speaks to for hours. The chorus, in which she sings of someone who shows her understanding, can apply to both the person and nature itself, equating the two in as places where Adrianne can be herself as she works to rediscover who she is.
What makes this soul-baring style feel so introspective is the subtlety of its accompanying instrumentation. Most tracks on “Bright Future” consist only of some combination of guitar, piano and violin. Without a full band, the listener is made to hone in on Lenker’s words and vocal performance, meditating on her self-reflection.
But this simplicity doesn’t make “Bright Future” musically uninspired. The instrumentation on “Bright Future” is brilliant, well-crafted and weaponized. Each instrument used is for a specific, nominable purpose, to outstanding and ethereal effect.
Instrumentation is what saves “Evol” — a track lyrically made of palindromes. While Lenker does craft an interesting poem, this kind of lyrical novelty can quickly sound juvenile. But Lenker circumvents this by using only piano and violin to create a hypnotic, lullaby-like accompaniment. She lets it play 53 seconds before she sings, enough time to put us into the necessary trance to enjoy the lyrics.
The instrumental subtlety also lends itself to a quite mournful atmosphere on the occasional slow ballad, such as album closer “Ruined.” At first glance, “Ruined” is an odd end to an album called “Bright Future.” In it, Lenker admits that she is still not able to let go of her past love. Things have not gone back to normal, and she sings 15 times “you come around / I’m ruined.”
But to look at “Ruined” as a conclusion to a story would be a mistake. There is no linear end to healing. It ebbs and flows, pushes and pulls. No matter how well you heal or how far you get, old wounds can be reopened. Lenker knows that to be “Ruined” is not to be doomed. It only means that she will continue to rebuild herself until she can move on. It only means she will look forward to that bright future ahead.
