How beautiful it is to exist at the same time as Adrianne Lenker
Photo by C. Misha Handschumacher
In the halfway months of twenty-twenty, I spent a vast amount of my mornings nestled against a solitary tree in a field, a stones throw from the house I grew up in. Weary-eyed and painted orange by dawn, I would often allow myself to be completely surrounded by the cows that called it home. With curious hooves and a new day creeping towards me, I would pack up my guitar and say my goodbyes. I don’t remember what it was that made me feel so safe there, amidst a time so saturated with worry. I do, however, remember that I was listening to Adrianne Lenker.
I was first introduced to Lenker’s solo projects through a transatlantic, sonic soulmate-of-sorts. Having grown up in Georgia (US), she was undoubtedly a granola gateway to a genre relatively-untouched by the majority of English twenty-somethings. Playlists laced with Field Medic and Nick Drake exchanged for somber compilations of Flyte and Alex Turner, it’s a time I look back on with a full heart. I felt a little late to the party but incredibly lucky to be invited at all. I was about a year into indie-folk music on the whole; long enough to have heard Big Thief’s ‘Masterpiece’, and make a small dent in the discography of disarming intimacy that followed. But still painfully unaware of the personal work of frontman, Adrianne Lenker, including her 2014 album, ‘a-sides’, with ex-husband-turned-prolific-collaborator, Buck Meek.
Adrianne Lenker and Buck Meek in front of ‘Bonnie’, the ‘87 Chevy G20 in which they toured for 2 years.
‘Buck and Anne’, as they would later be coined, brushed shoulders on the same lineup as Berklee students during Lenker’s inaugural semester in Boston. In the first of a number of serendipities, their interaction was limited to her refusal to let him borrow her guitar for the show. Meek would soon graduate, leaving his future wife to wrap a community of Berklee musicians around her little finger. They locked eyes again years later in the juice aisle of a bodega. She’d only been in New York for a number of hours. A Bushwick warehouse romance to the soundtrack of Fleetwood Mac and John Prine would follow before the two eventually split romantically and formed the diaristic folk-rock band, Big Thief. I’ll fill in the blanks here when I inevitably write about their next release. In the meantime, let’s take a journey through Lenker’s discography while I try and keep it together.
Lighthouse - Hours Were The Birds (2014)
In this Youtube video from 2012, a freshly twenty-one-year-old Adrianne Lenker serenades a small crowd, including a baby, in Harvard Square, Massachusetts. Around one minute in, after a long guitar instrumental seemingly transfixed in her own world, she oozes the first lyrics to ‘Lighthouse’:
“Well, I left here in my sleep when I was dreaming / Miles and miles away into a place / My heart was scheming an escape that love drew from me”
Amidst a clueless crowd walking passed the performance, one woman stops like a deer confronted with headlights, mouth open, arms to her sides, as if she was hearing music for the first time. A tiny hand sometimes slips into frame, and every-so-often between verses, you can hear the appropriately reassuring murmurs of the baby on the other end of it.
‘Lighthouse’ would be preserved for 2 more years before it was finally released as part of Lenker’s first studio album; ‘Hours Were The Birds’. It comes as no surprise that the track I hold dearest on the album is one that shines with ‘twang’ essence. One of her more trad-folk-leaning, complex guitar instrumentals lays the table for a poetic vocal performance, shining with literary influence. A bit over a whisper, as if she’s right beside you, Lenker utters “you were the moon / and I was only seventeen” in near-perfect Bob Dylan-esque emulation. Much like Dylan, with words, she builds a dam; with sound, she sweeps it away. Certain of a further connection between them, I have spent my week confined to their discographies alone, attempting to write a logical comparison. But in moments of reflection, I dimmed my thoughts down to a conclusion of ignorance. Do they really sound similar or have I just not listened to enough folk music? Why do I so often see them as two sides of the same coin? These were questions I had become satisfied with leaving as such, until I stumbled upon this blog post from Big Thief fan and music journalist, Rick Burin. He talks about a mutual prolificacy, noting that Dylan released 5 albums and wrote multiple masterpieces in the space of two years, and goes on to point out a similar pattern of productivity in Lenker’s work. Effortlessly juggling two solo projects, two Big Thief LPs and a 20-song double album while touring, there’s an undeniable need to create art that pours out of both of them to an equal degree. A less prosaic comparison is what Burin calls ‘ageing in reverse’:
“Dylan wrote ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ at 21, junked his political ideals in favour of creative ones with ‘My Back Pages’ at 23, and by 27 was writing throwaway country ditties…
By comparison, Lenker was a late starter: she didn’t put out ‘Indiana’, ‘I Still Hear You’ and ‘Steamboat’ until she was 22. But the three records (!) she released in 2014 feel like the crystallisation of late style: simple, pared-down, timeless. They are an old man’s songs. Perhaps her life has been back to front in a way: she married young, then caught up on her ‘freedom’ later.”
The blogpost in question really scratched an itch for me, noting similarities to an almost spiritual level; “a love of language for language’s sake”, their “capacity for quietness or ferocity", a mutual country influence “tinged with embarrassment” etc. But at its most conscientious, it is unafraid to address the strengths Lenker and her bandmates have over Dylan in their kindness. At his funniest, Burin writes “You can accuse Dylan of many things but not of being a nice person”.
In its chorus, ‘Lighthouse’ rejects the idea of linear temporality, suggesting that “time is just an ocean”. It’s most likely a reference to the novels of Virgina Woolf, namely ‘To The Lighthouse’, and ‘The Waves’, both of which have interesting attitudes towards time, and would, in a perfect world be soundtracked by Lenker’s music, if ever adapted to film. It’s these flippant remarks that make ‘Lighthouse’ perhaps a more palatable track when landed upon in a shuffle of Adrianne’s discography.
Lenker proudly holding on to her 2018 album, ‘abysskiss’ (left) and her the aforementioned album, ‘a-sides’ (right) in a record store
abysskiss (2018)
‘Abysskiss’ has this exhaled quality; Lenker’s sonic sigh after a four-year stint of only releasing music under the Big Thief moniker. It is a gentle wind in comparison to the less-subtle outbursts of ‘Masterpiece’, but so often catches me tying my laces: Polarising lyricism and harp-like guitar plucking plunge a knee into my back while I bend at my most vulnerable. It’s so casual in its assault, holding an arm outstretched in the form of delicate harmonics and calming melodies. There’s an irony to the ability to hide behind an instrumental so strung one-dimensionally akin to the music of Elliott Smith. Sure, the darkest of themes are there in plain sight if you’re willing to accept them, yet in most parts, it’s easier to absorb ‘abysskiss’ as you would Smith’s ‘Either/Or’. The album feels like it was designed to be listened to passively, almost to disguise its lyrical content of contrasting forces. It toys with themes of life and death, beauty and abject horror, the dreamlike and the very much real while remaining ostensibly beatific. Lenker harnesses this rare ability to acknowledge both sides of multiple coins while they spin perennially, each landing safely in her palms, ready and willing to be tossed again. It is, and excuse my French, a really fucking good album, potentially overlooked for the same reasons that it shines so brightly. It’s an apposite response to an album thematically chained to duality.
anything - songs (2020)
In March of 2020, post a Big Thief tour cut short by coronavirus, Lenker drove out to the mountains of Massachusetts and rented a one-room cabin. Much reminiscent of the conception of Bon Iver’s ‘For Emma, Forever Ago’, the result was an eleven track album, modestly named ‘songs’, and a b-side of instrumental tracks dedicated to her ex-girlfriend, consisting of mostly wind chimes and harmonics (named ‘instrumentals’, of course). Lenker struck a connection within these new four walls, writing nine of the eventual tracks within them. ‘Songs’ is recorded in AAA (entirely analogue, no digital process used), straight to tape using a battery-powered Sony walkman in parts, unafraid of imperfections, and permeated with childlike curiosity, fluttering guitar leads and esoteric lyricism. Some songs wear a halo of distant birdsong or rainfall, while others play host to the occasional chair creak. It is one of my favourite albums of all time.
The album’s poster child; ‘anything’ undoubtedly exists on the highest possible plane of music. From the opening couplet, “staring down the barrel of the hot sun / shining with the sheen of a shotgun”, I am instantly floored. Lenker takes us through the seasons in an unadulterated montage of memories from a longterm relationship. Feeling the heat on beach day, “mango in your mouth, juice dripping / shoulder of your shirt sleeve slipping”, she reflects on a summer spent observing the small details of her lover. This is the first of a number of grippingly intimate moments throughout the track: Hanging her girlfriends jeans from a washing line, falling asleep in her car, listening to her eyes blinking (!), it is, in parts, Lenker at her most romantic; an honest account of how it feels to really be in love. However, what makes ‘anything’ particularly special to me is its ability to communicate the more visceral moments of love, and the ways in which it addresses the relationship with oneself. It’s difficult not to feel an intense vicarious pain for Lenker as she shares the details of a Christmas eve spent trying to avoid an inevitable argument with her girlfriend’s mother, followed by a potentially metaphorical ‘dog bite’, leaving her on risk at the ER.
“Dogs white teeth slice right through my fist / Drive to the ER and they put me on risk”
A dog (more often a ‘black dog’) is often used as a metaphorical representation for melancholy. It’s possible that the dog in this line may not be literal, but rather represent a depressed Lenker inflicting self-harm.
There’s an overarching balance to ‘anything’. It remains sweet and melodically unburdened even through its more frightening moments. For me, it serves as a reminder to embrace balance in personal relationships and accept a more simple vision of love. Not too dissimilar, in the lines “I don’t wanna be the owner of your fantasy / I just wanna be a part of your family”, Lenker expresses the desire for a more domestic, symbiotic relationship. We are so often subject to want a debilitating, all-consuming, fantastical romantic partner. Such relationships are figureheads of literature; Romeo and Juliet, Verlaine and Rimbaud etc. The truth is that it’s difficult to accept a love that doesn’t carry drama enough to alter your life entirely, or have the potential to kill you. Lenker doesn’t subscribe to this. She doesn’t want to be her partners singular object of desire; the “owner of her fantasy”. Instead, she craves to be a “part” of her, the “salt in [her] sea”, like a “dragon” to a “new warm mountain”. Maybe less poetically, an ex of mine would often joke about wanting to be underneath my skin, as if she couldn’t hold me tightly enough until she permeated my pores and we became one. I think Lenker oozes a similar discontent for being constrained to the human physical condition while being in love.
Learning to play ‘anything’ has become somewhat of a rite of passage for any guitarist with a taste for singer-songwriter music; its fingerpicking patterns so complex that they, at times, could well be coming from multiple instruments. It is often the first song to come to mind when I pick up the one guitar that I leave in DADGAD (open tuning). When I play it all the way to the end, I like to replicate the soft, optimistic ‘Whoo!’ that Lenker lets out in the outro, as if carried away by the music. A little moment of joy, amongst a song so deeply rooted in emotion, it reminds me of Phoebe Bridgers’ ‘whoo!’ before the brass instrumental in Kyoto.
Discovering ‘anything’ felt closer to everything. It felt like finding a new birthmark after twenty-four years living in the same body. I hope that is testament to its permanence from the first listen.
Photo by C. Misha Handschumacher
Ruined (2023)
On a TUESDAY earlier his month, Lenker broke her three-year solo-project silence with ‘Ruined’, a plaintive and pining piano ballad accompanied by a video directed by her brother, Noah. It is tender, repetitive and in my opinion, best enjoyed while staring out of the window of the London overground. The new release placed a delicate tear on the start of my week, stitched up only by managing to buy tickets for her 2024 tour on the Friday that followed, and by the realisation that ‘Ruined’ will likely be the single to an upcoming album.
In 2017, Lenker told NPR that she’s “committed to an honest expression, not necessarily a performance”. I somehow doubt that either will be a problem in May next year.
To Halle, for your musical influence and love from a distance
