“songs” by Adrianne Lenker
Release Date: October 23, 2020
Length: 39 minutes
Through songs, Adrianne Lenker manages to carve out a quiet space amidst a chaotic outside world.
Adrianne Lenker’s songs was recorded alone in a one-room cabin in Westhampton, Massachusetts, in the wake of her band, Big Thief’s, tour cancellation due to COVID-19. Stripped of production and written in near-total isolation, the album feels like the listener is looking into Lenker’s diary, an unfiltered journal of grief, reflection, and hope shaped by lost relationships and a world in suspension.
Much of songs centers on the grief of romantic loss, particularly Lenker’s relationship with Indigo Sparke, her ex-partner. The opening track, “two reverse,” sets the tone immediately, reflective rather than resentful: “Is it a crime to say I still need you?” Lenker delves deeper on “anything,” the album’s most vulnerable track. Built around longing, the song catalogues desire through a stream of “wanna”s, like Lenker is exposing the selfish, aching thoughts that surface after love dissolves. The track’s striking, but very specific, imagery, which feels nearly alive–“Shoulder of your shirt sleeve slippin’”—tells us of the tiny things Lenker noticed about Indigo.
If “anything” captures the aftermath, “heavy focus” and “zombie girl” (both favorites of mine) experience love at its most playful, recalling the nostalgic thrill of romantic beginnings. Lenker expands her meditation on grief on “ingydar,” a quiet reflection on the death of her great-aunt’s horse, treating decay as gentle, circular, and inevitable–“His eyes are blueberries, video screens, Minneapolis schemes, and the dried berries from books half read”–Tracks like “half return” and “come” shift the album’s pacing (to more fast and slow places, respectively), without breaking its spell, pairing ideas about childhood and forgiveness of someone unknown.
By the album’s close, through tracks like “not a lot, just forever,” “dragon eyes,” and “my angel”, songs feels less like a collection of tracks than a conversation with Lenker herself. Minimalist, devastating, and deeply human, it’s an album that finds meaning within grief.