On the year's most romantic song, "anything", which is destined to soundtrack a movie montage in the future, Adrianne Lenker shares her immediate desires. A violin seeps in and pulls out her gentle guitar arpeggios, teasing out the tactile simplicity of human passion.
I wanna kiss, kiss your eyes again
Wanna witness your eyes looking
I don’t wanna talk about anyone
I wanna sleep in your car while you’re driving
Lay on your lap when I’m crying
Though quarantine enhanced the intimate beauty of Songs, it would understate just how subtle and stirring Adrianne Lenker’s solo album is. Her hushed folk is more elemental and raw than Iron & Wine’s allusive narratives or Julia Byrne’s stately elegies. With inscrutable images of love and loss, the Big Thief lead vocalist designs deeply personal mosaics under the quiet spell of her vulnerable voice and acoustic guitar. It feels like we are witness to her fragile act of creation, hearing the deep ache of her collagist thoughts for the very first time.
“two reverse” reaches out in unbridled longing. (“Is it a crime to say / I still need you.”) She sings about her grandmother, her shared recipes, and cries from the woods, but it is difficult to decipher except for its emotionally resonant heartbreak. “ingydar” juxtaposes lush chords against scenes of decay, where everything eats and is eaten. (“The horse lies naked in the shed / Evergreen anodyne decompounding / Flies draw sugar from his head.”) It is disquieting and strangely alluring as she contemplates life and its disintegration. Her whispers close out "zombie girl," where she turns attention to the living after an unpleasant dream: “I cover you with questions, cover you with explanations, cover you with music, what’s on your mind?”
Somehow, Lenker draws us even closer as the record winds up. “not a lot, just forever” reveals private details of her budding relationship. (“And your dearest fantasy / is to grow a baby in me / I could be a good mother / And I wanna be your wife / not a lot, just forever.”) She cleverly observes they are “intertwined, sewn together” as “the rock bears the weather.” On “dragon eyes", under blooming stars on a warm summer night, huddled close together in their bedroom, she sums up Songs with its most fitting refrain: I just want a place with you, I just want a place.
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