release date: Mar. 22, 2024
format: vinyl / digital (12 x File, FLAC)
[album rate: 4 / 5] [4,08]
producer: Philip Weinrobe
label: 4AD - nationality: USA
Track highlights: 1. "Real House" (4 / 5) - 2. "Sadness as a Gift" (live from Greenwich Village with Nick Hakim) - 4. "No Machine" - 5. "Free Treasure" (live on The Tonight Show)- 6. "Vampire Empire" - 8. "Candleflame" - 9. "Already Lost" - 10. "Cell Phone Says" - 11. "Donut Seam" - 12. "Ruined" (live from Greenwich Village with Nick Hakim)
Studio album by Adrianne Lenker in between albums with Big Thief, and most recently the band released the acclaimed Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You (Feb. 2022). Lenker's most recent solo album was Songs & Instrumentals (Oct. 2020), and this new collection is more like her other solo efforts, more naked, more clean folk and singer / songwriter-oriented. That said, Bright Future contains other performers than Lenker's vocal on top of a lonesome strumming guitar as was the case on her quiet 2020 album. It's still not in the same fully-bodied arrangements as you'll find on albums by Big Thief - only "Vampire Empire" sounds like a song written with the band in mind as the instrumentation appear to be similar with violin, piano, percussion, banjo, guitar, and harmony vocals, but generally, the songs here are played in a much more subtle fashion, as only to turn focus on Lenker's narratives.
Bright Future is so far easily this year's best album and highly recommended.
[ bandcamp ]
