Adrianne Lenker’s Bright Future is so good it reminded me that her 2020 record songs is perfect. The past week, I have struggled to get ‘Sadness As A Gift’ out of my head; today, all day, the words of ‘ingydar’ have transfixed me:

Fragilely, gradually and surrounding
The horse lies naked in the shed
Evergreen anodyne decompounding
Flies draw sugar from his head

His eyes are blueberries, video screens
Minneapolis schemes and the dried flowers
From books half-read
The juice of dark cherries cover his chin
The dog walks in and the crow lies in his jaw like lead

Everything eats and is eaten, time is fed.

Let that not take anything away from this album at hand. Lenker’s unflinching earnestness – something that has spelt trouble for her in the social media realm – is a vessel, without which Bright Future would not be so utterly endearing, so quietly heartbreaking. “You spin me all around, and then you ask me not to spin,” Lenker sings on ‘Vampire Empire’, capturing a hopeless, familiar rage in sweetly innocent terms.

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Sam Gollings

30 April 2024 (written 28 March 2024)