Adrianne Lenker delivers another fantastic solo project with ‘Bright Future’

On March 22, 2024, Adrianne Lenker released her sixth solo album Bright Future. The album delivers the poetic lyricism that Lenker has become known for with beautiful and sparse instrumentation. 

Lenker released her first project in 2006 at only fourteen years old, entitled Stages of the Sun. In 2014, she released her second solo record, Hours were the Birds. That same year she released two projects, A-Sides and B-Sides, along with her future bandmate and future husband, Buck Meek. 

In 2015, Lenker and Meek founded the band Big Thief, bringing in bassist Max Oleartchik and drummer James Krivchenia. The band released their debut album Masterpiece, to which received much critical acclaim. In 2016, Lenker and Buck married.

Since Masterpiece, the band has gone on to release four more records, including 2022’s Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You, a twenty song folk and folk-rock double-LP which garnered some of the most critical acclaim the band has received.

Lenker released another solo project, Abysskiss, in 2018. That same year she and Meek divorced but both remained in Big Thief. In 2020, during the Covid-19 lockdown, Lenker released two projects, Songs and Instrumentals. They were recorded using purely analogue recording techniques. Songs featured only Lanker and her acoustic guitar. 

Lenker uses many of the same recording techniques for Bright Future as she did Songs. However the very beginning of the first track Real House tells the listener they are about to experience a more broad musical palate than with her last project.

Lenkers only accompaniment for the track is a muted, almost arrhythmic piano, playing melancholic chords as she recounts selected childhood memories and yearns for a simpler time as well as her mother’s love.

The album then switches up immediately with the track, Sadness as a Gift, the second single released for the album. The song features much more lush instrumentation, leaving much less empty space in the instrumental than in other tracks. Lenker sings about a relationship that has seemingly run its course, and is very near its end.

The record features an alternate version of Vampire Empire, a song which Big Thief released in 2023. The instrumentation in this version is very different from the Big Thief studio release, featuring acoustic instrumentation as opposed to the electric guitar driven version released by Big Thief.

Lenker’s raw and emotional vocals describe through many metaphors a relationship in which Lenker feels she has no power, and is at the mercy of her partner. 

Already Lost has banjo leading the instrumental charge, as opposed to Lenker’s standard acoustic guitar. Lenker doubles up her vocal tracks at various points throughout the song, a technique used by many folk artists before her. Lenker’s lyrics employ some powerful, yet at times vague imagery. 

Tracks such as, Free Treasure and Cell Phone Says, are both more stripped back. They are almost like something you would hear on Songs, yet they don’t quite seem to carry the same emotional potency that many tracks off that project do, and end up feeling like they fall a little flat. 

Overall, Bright Future is a fantastic project from Lenker. The varied, yet still reserved instrumentation holds listener attention. Lenker’s lyrics about love, relationships, and nature are as beautiful and powerful as ever. The album is mixed in such a way that you feel as if you’re in the room watching Lenker and her few collaborators perform, as they put together an amazing listening experience.