Consumer Guide Album

Adrianne Lenker: Bright Future [4AD, 2024]
There's a fragility to the 31-year-old Big Thief chief's solo album that seems to disorient admiring contemporaries who can't figure out how to reconcile her blatant genius with her sweet, thoughtful, unassuming meditations. "I don't feel strong," she whispers or murmurs or reflects as she recalls being a seven-year-old whose dream was to invent a portal that would enable her to soar "high over the crowd" while at the same time not really knowing "where I'd go without you." Which is to say that high among many other things this transcendent collection of poetic melodies is a breakup album. If you missed the point somehow, she acknowledges simply "I don't know what I'd do without you," because when it comes down to it "I wanna be your lover and I want to be your man"--or is it just "I wanted to be the one/That you could understand"? Truth is, in her insuperably melodic way, she wants it all. But she'd rather stick to being be lovely than make a big deal of it. A