The sixth album from the leader of the excellent alt-Americana band Big Thief opens with the piano-vocal ballad Real House ; we had to take a break after listening to it. Is it so poignant because Adrianne Lenker digs into her most fragile memories, or because we have, as throughout the album, the feeling that we could be sitting next to her, at the end of the bench , while she sings? Recorded live and in small groups, like the previous one Songs (2020), Bright Future is an album enriched by the complicity between Lenken and his colleagues, magnified by the sound recording without artifice, sometimes stunning as on Fool And No Machinewhere the sound of the guitars gives the illusion of having been reworked in the studio, bringing his folk song into the same dazzling modernity as Big Thief — Lenker also includes it on the album Vampire Empire, which his group finally released as a single last year. A gem of an album that consolidates the status of Lenker, one of the most gifted songwriters of her generation.
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