Adrianne Lenker

• Abysskiss [Saddle Creek, 2018] ★
• Bright Future [4AD, 2024] A
• Live at Revolution Hall [4AD, 2025] A

Consumer Guide Reviews:

Abysskiss [Saddle Creek, 2018]
Replete with quietude and beatitude, audacity and fragility, clarity and opacity, this remarkable yet dispensable album by Big Thief's reason for being has a firmer grip on her place in the cosmos than on which way to turn at the next intersection ("Terminal Paradise," "Womb") ★

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

Live at Revolution Hall [4AD, 2025]
As unassuming as she is prolific, Catskills queen Lenker is too delicate and enigmatic for some. But an entranced, occasionally befuddled admirer like me will hear these two putatively off-the-cuff hours of quiet music she recorded to adoring admirers out in Oregon, her sheer charm splits what difference there may be between captivating and compelling. Instrumentation is sparse and some would say undetectable, sidepeople tried-and-true fans more than collaborators, and not all 43 tracks are songs—a few are recitations, even chats. But the changeable, somewhat ramshackle music articulates a personality not just persona only a grump would turn up her or his nose at. There's a sweetness, a modesty, a self-effacing humor to almost every moment of music she performs—and yes, she is performing here, not just expressing herself. Only a grump or a cynic would dismiss her as anything like insubstantial. A