In 2020 when life was cut short and everyone went home to await further guidance in isolation, the members of Big Thief were caught in the middle of a multi-legged tour. Cancelling the remaining shows, they retreated to old haunts while vocalist, Adrianne Lenker, rented a small cabin out in the western Massachusetts mountains. Here, with the help of friends and family, Lenker was able to convert the small wooden interior into a recording space and with producer-friend Philip Weinrobe hunker down through the longest Spring. Out of that silent destitute music was born.
Spring eventually ran its course, and Lenker and Weinrobe emerged from the highlands toting the analog-recorded songs and instrumentals. The new double LP was the result of long mornings taping improvised instrumentals and battery powered acoustic sessions and writing and rewriting heartsick songs, entirely devoid of any digital recording equipment. The record sounds, as Lenker described, “like the inside of an acoustic guitar.” In the interim they went for walks and cooked on a wood stove. Oft recorded with the door thrown wide to pick up forest noises and twinkling wind chimes, songs and instrumentals is very in spirit with spontaneous Bob Dylan hotel sketches and blurry 70s sessions of folk artists like John Prine, Judee Sill and Karen Dalton.
Since songs and instrumentals, Lenker was reunited with bandmates Buck Meek, Max Oleartchik and James Krivchenia for Big Thief’s excellent album Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You and ensuing tours in 2022 and 2023. The time parceled between playing shows and now was, perhaps inevitably, a time of artistic bloom for the group. Albums from Buck Meek and Krivchenia sprung up and the latter’s percussive watermark was left on a number of projects from Mega Bog’s indie oeuvre End of Everything to Taylor Swift’s re-recordings of Red and Speak Now. With the warmth of DNWMIBIY, a veritable quilt-of-a-record, to keep cozy under and two shining singles since, we might count ourselves contented with the Thiefs’ discography… for now.
Lo and behold the follow-up to songs and instrumentals arrives in time with Spring flowers and like Karen Dalton before her, Adrianne Lenker is once again leaving for the country. Recorded in Autumn somewhere remote; once more with Philip Weinrobe and once more using analog-analog-analog processes (recorded-mixed-mastered using only analog equipment like tape recorders). Bright Future is like pressing leaves between the pages of heavy books. In preserving something fading, both literally with the obsolescence of analog technology and figuratively, over time we run the risk of forgetting the context that explained its significance or warranted our saving the thing in the first place. Yet the beauty in simple things lasts and context is no longer required to love them.
When telling stories, context is undeniably helpful. The stories on Bright Future are those of healing. Giving nothing but the whole of her heart to her work we see our own memories reflected in a simple sharing of experiences, done up in Lenker’s specific and brilliant diction. “Real House” is heavy, especially for an album’s opening track, but handles memory in an intensely intimate way. If your bravery stands alongside you through “Real House” and “Sadness As a Gift” (about the pains of separation) then you’re through to the whimsy that keeps (mostly) through the rest of the record. The stories here carry an optimism that could only be wrested from time. Bright Future feels its way through these vignettes in the same first-person perspective taken with songs. “I feel like a fool, yeah. Walking downhill with the dogs. You keep it cool. Watching my fire ignite.”
Adrianne Lenker’s designs often sound swallowed by the immediacy of her emotions, fielded in a transient place and time. As such, Bright Future continues to be spontaneous in its production style and authentic in its sullied live-feel. Weinrobe and Lenker emphasize the capture of ambient noise; like the wind in porch chimes on instrumentals’ “Mostly Chimes” outside sounds are allowed in and imprinted on the tracklist. Floorboards creaking, bird calls, muttered bits of conversations. No miniscule noise is deemed unwanted because it belongs in the song.
More highlights from the new album emerge including a surprise, stripped apart rendition of “Vampire Empire,” friend-guest Nick Hakim lending on “Donut Seam” and Lenker herself handling the poetic flourish of her songwriting on the semordnilap ballad “Evol.” There is still much to unpack and watch bloom and as its title suggests, Bright Future is an optimistic album. It’s bundled happiness comes in waves of reprieve and feels like all the best fiddle-breaks, tin-pan-jams and “Spud Infinities” from Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You. The future is bright for the Big Thief star.
gone gazing 