Adrianne Lenker – Bright Future Review

Brilliance from Big Thief alumni is an expectation. Listeners are in safe hands with Adrianne Lenker and their latest album, Bright Future. There is no harm in looking back if you have the right words for it. Lenker has an abundance. Reflecting on childhood, those early days of experience, the sense of fear and love found in first times for horror or hope. Bright Future is a stunning work, an autobiographical wash of isolated vocals and a reflective flicker, these hopes of kindling a relationship through shared experiences which feel like a lifetime ago. It is as tender and broken as it sounds, but Lenker maintains this hopeful nature, this spectacle of living life through music. Lenker has since she penned her first song at eight, and Bright Future feels so totally in tune with seasonal change, the speed at which we age and how the first cracks of Spring light make all the difference. 

Washed up on the shores of heartbreak with the likes of Fool and No Machine, the dependence on another heard in the latter is a stunning, folk-oriented wonder. There is an omnibenevolence found on Free Treasure, its touching acoustics up there with the best of ballad country offerings as Lenker works their way through an intimate collection of mounting emotional turmoil. It comes to a head on Vampire Weekend, a cover of work created with Big Thief. Lenker is an artist who does not need to separate themselves from their works elsewhere. So many vocalists or those who branch off into their own works do so as a desperate attempt at kindling some new meaning or image, but not Lenker.  

They do as they always do, creating a tenderness and skilful flourish of acoustics and soft piano, a guiding tool for an impressive vocal range. Where Bright Future may be relentless in its heartbreaking scope, it is assured by the exceptional instrumentals which bring out the best of Already Lost and Cell Phone Says. These moments of reflection, and their sudden resurgence when trying to get by, is a masterful stroke from Lenker. Exposed to the elements of life, Lenker is candid and thoroughly open about her early years, the poignant flourishes of an artist looking back to push ahead. There is no finality to Bright Future, no sense the ruminations on past mistakes or joys will ever be removed, but there is an attempt to control them, to conclude the harshest of thoughts with an openness and an intimacy often reserved for the present. 

Bright Future has all the effectiveness of a life-saving album. For Lenker it salvages the past, reflects on the infinite highs and lows through a neutral lens and contains itself with flourishes of intimate acoustic work, a voice which is both powerful and, in turn, fragile enough to collapse at any moment but with it comes a sincere power and observation on how our earliest moments affect us for the rest of our days. It is up to the individual to mount a challenge against them, to embrace those fearful seconds, the real joy and exultation, and compartmentalise them into experiences they can learn from – that is if they want to avoid the consequences of the future. Bright Future is a weaving, wonderful piece of well-worked folk music, and at its core, Lenker shows the genre remains unchanged in its impact on the heart.