As the lead force behind Big Thief, Adrianne Lenker is responsible for one of our favourite albums of the last few years. Capacity, released in 2017, was a startling blend of folk and rock all centred on Lenker’s wonderful writing. The album was full of “stories propelled by the energy within their flow,” we wrote in our review, “as though its characters and the very world they inhabit are born of language and not vice versa, scenes conjured through cadence as though through spell or incantation.”
Not content with her work with Big Thief (who, by the way, have a new record in the works on 4AD), Adrianne Lenker also records solo songs under her own name, a chance for her intimate lyrics to sit at the heart of quieter, more opaque ruminations. Released back in October, latest album abysskiss is further proof that Lenker is right at the forefront of the not insignificant roster of contemporary songwriters.
abysskiss was recorded quickly, intended as a diary-like snapshot of a certain period of Lenker’s life in much the same way that an Impressionist painter fills their canvas before a fleeting feeling is lost. The result is a collection of poetic shards, bruised and tender and fierce despite their hushed nature, steeped in mystery and loss and a sense of esoteric humanity.
It is in the oblique nature of the record that its true majesty lies, the uncertainty fostering a curious sense of mystery and meaning. “See my death become a trail,” Lenker sings on opener ‘terminal paradise’. “And the trail leads to a flower / I will blossom in your sail / Every dreamed and waking hour.” The song is typical of Lenker’s work on abysskiss, not confronting ideas or themes but skirting around their invisible edges, sketching an outline of something too large or important to be grasped directly.
Which sounds far more complicated that it is in practice. Take the beguiling melody in the chorus of ‘cradle’, a song that’s almost ballad-like in its unhurried romance, rising from gently intertwined guitars. The track is a great example of how Lenker uses a basic, traditional set up (i.e. her guitar and her voice) but is able to hit little pockets of rhythm, small explored places that feel fresh and new but never over-complicated or jarring.
baby you’re still too proud to come down
maybe i’m still too loud to hear
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Such an effect lies behind the intentions of the album. abysskiss is about “this whole conversation we’re having right now, about death and loss, and the deaths within life that happen,” Lenker describes in a great in-depth Q&A with Gabriela Tully Claymore for Stereogum. “It’s something like this bridge between the infinite and the finite and the mystery and the abyss of complete wonder, and maybe even that spirit of witnessing something, something really powerful and not knowing what it is, and feeling small.”
The idea is perhaps most conspicuous on the title track (“Wilderness / Vast abyss / Will we ever kiss?) but is present in every song, from the rhythmic lullaby ‘blue and red horses’ to tender closer ’10 miles’—a song which closes the life/death cycle that began in the album’s opening. Even the most cryptic songs are imbued with such concepts. The lyrics on ‘symbol’ tumble together in a breathless poetic rush, a tangle of symbolism knit into a nest of finger-picked guitar that somehow straightens itself out into a clear conclusion.
The symbol of your love is time
For all of its abstraction and arcane symbols, abysskiss is an intuitive, organic record, and it is this which provides the common thread through Lenker’s oeuvre. It is “as though the meaning is summoned from the words themselves, something in the syllabic arrangement dragging stories and emotions into our world from somewhere else entirely,” we wrote of Big Thief’s Capacity, words that could just as easily be describing abysskiss. “Lenker’s gift is her ability to recognise the strange, innate forces within language, surrender to them, and present them back to us with a crystal-clear clarity.”
abysskiss is out now on Saddle Creek Records and you can get it from their website or the Adrianne Lenker Bandcamp page.
