Album Review: ‘Songs’ by Adrianne Lenker

By Tom Carlson

In short, Adrianne Lenker’s “Songs” is the most intimate and texture focused album of 2020. I recommend “Songs” to anyone, even those not a fan of soft folk and emotional voices. At only 39 minutes Adrianne manages to use personal experiences to make us feel some of the most universal elements of isolation during the global pandemic.

The last time I saw Lenker play was in a small town in western Massachusetts at a theatre of no more than a hundred seats. We drove a few hours out to go see her, we had been fans since her album “Capacity,” under the “Big Thief” moniker; to which we would listen on repeat. Lenker brings me somewhere rare in her music. 

Lenker takes me back to high school when my musician friends and I used to spend snowy weekend nights in the renovated upstairs of a barn and pass the guitar sharing our new songs. The setting was intimate and personal. We weren’t writing songs or playing in bands, we wrote for each other. The 2020 album captures this same rare feeling in a way that I didn’t think was possible. “Songs” was recorded in a small abode in western Massachusetts at the feet of the Berkshire mountains, during the midsts of the pandemic, using only the most minimal equipment. She uses the ambient sounds and textures of New England in a way that is chillingly recognizable to a local like myself. The audio is processed on an 8 track tape recorder and reminds me of my own lo-fi home recordings.

Lenker’s usage of atmosphere and ambience captures so well the constant familiarity we’ve all gained from being inside so much through this hell of a year. (Adrienne Lenker)

Lenker's ability to forge intimate moments between the listener and herself can be found immediately in the first track, “Anything”. She outlines personal experiences from both the periphery and the smallest details in a way that portrays memory perfectly; the story is coherent but nonlinear — lyrics are a fog of touching vignettes. 

Tracks like “Ingydar” and “Half Return” show Lenker’s mastery of texture. The layering of acoustic guitars makes an environment where you almost feel placed between each of the six strings. “Half Return” uses guitar melodies to harmonize and contrast the vocal melody creating almost an American take on the famous Brazilian baixão; a method of contrapuntal guitar lines that facilitate both rhythm and harmony. 

“Songs” finds texture in more than its instrumentation; it finds texture in space and time. “Forward Beckon Rebound” takes advantage of the imperfections of analog recording with an intro that captures moments just before a take, thus giving us a glimpse into the ambience of the space. “Songs” embraces its own setting so deeply in a way that studio recordings rarely capture. Nature is its sound floor. 

“Come” is unlike any other song on the album; it reverses the role of what is musically in focus. Natural ambience is a huge textural theme in this album. In this track Lenker pivots the sound of the rain on the porch as a centerpiece to the actual music which lays behind the rain almost as if the guitar is the setting instead. Her vocals and guitar louden as a gradient between this setting and the following track in which we hear birdsong and wind chimes. This shift creates a stark contrast from rain to shine not in a way that feels like a veil has been lifted to brighter times but instead, another small step in a seemingly endless cycle. 

That cycle captures a feeling we’ve all felt from being locked inside for these past few months. Time passes so abruptly and without measure. Whereas some albums aim for a continuous feeling (think Sgt Pepper, where one song bleeds into the other), Lenker makes us aware of the time it took to put this together for us. As we’ve all been inside for these past few months, the world has changed so much around us. Lenker’s usage of atmosphere and ambience captures so well the constant familiarity of being inside so much through this hell of a year.

Tom is a culture writer for La Tonique.