“Bright Future” is not an ironic title for Adrianne Lenker’s newest solo album. The Big Thief frontwoman’s musings on the end of the world aren’t meant to inspire unbridled angst, but rather bravery in the face of a bright, atomic future. Decay isn’t threatening, it’s purposeful and cyclical— a lesson Lenker teaches time and time again. Except in the case of “Bright Future,” we are meant to open our eyes to the liberation and intimacy of the achy pointlessness.
“Bright Future” was recorded and co-produced with Philip Weinrobe, who also collaborated with her on “songs” and “instrumentals,” Lenker’s two solo albums released in 2020. Multi-instrumentalists and vocalists Mat Davidson, Nick Hakim, and Josefin Runsteen also joined the two in the recording of “Bright Future.” The four add vocals and instrumentals throughout the album to offer a quiet, yet everlasting presence alongside Lenker.
The opening track, “Real House”, is a nearly six-minute piano plunge into the depths of memory and nostalgia that the rest of the album neglects in its poeticness. The gentle acoustics and keys that seem to hammer, yet hasten themselves from wailing, exist only for Lenker’s voice to relieve the tension. The track resembles the ambient profoundness of “Mount Eerie,” while also offering something entirely more pointed than the rest of Lenker and Big Thief’s discography. The lyrics “So many dreams of flying/Rising high over the crowd/And they go ‘oh man, look at her go’/And I’d go” loom like a proverb over the rest of the album’s playfulness.
“Fool”, a pre-released track of the album, has an angular and folksy tilt. The catchiness of the hand-plucking guitar contrasts lyrics that capture the experience of having two feet stuck in the mud with an indecisive lover while watching the rest of humanity continue.
“Evol” is a fragile testament to facing forwards in a backward world. Lenker’s impressive ability to weave meaning through wordplay shows on this track. She sings, “Love spells evol, backwards, people/ Words back, words backwards are lethal/ Time spells emit, who can see it?/ Feel says leef, tips eas is sea spit.” The distillation of the experience is dizzying, but almost purposely, as the following track “Candleflame” stagnates this momentum, merely existing to show the gritty texture the album embraces.
“Vampire Empire,” a track released in July by Big Thief, is re-recorded on this album to show Lenker’s evolution. The track is stripped down with raw off-the-cuff vocals that cut the album in half with its whimsical agitation.
The most obvious allusions to nature and the impending doom of climate change come from “Donut Seam”, featuring Hakim’s vocals. The two sing together in the chorus, “This whole world is dying/ Don’t it seem like a good time for swimming/ Before all the water disappears?” The track reflects on the end of a relationship alongside the end of the world. However, Lenker is reflecting fondly, with a finality that doesn’t feel final. The track feels like it should be the end of the album as it reminds us of its purpose— to not fear how the world as we know it will fade.
The final track on the album, “Ruined,” pulls us back into a loop. Similar to “Real House” the piano draws us back into an earnest spiral. The song in itself describes continuity, the experience of being drawn into someone the moment they appear again, even in memory.
“Bright Future” is perhaps the most lived-in of Lenker’s solo albums. The album effortlessly weaves the complexity of appreciating all that is pretty and painful in life whilst loss and change never cease to reel you back in. This gracious maturity makes “Bright Future” Lenker’s most emotionally extensive and impressive project to date.
Label: 4AD Listen on Spotify