Born July 9th 1991 - Indianapolis, Indiana USA, Lenker spent the first 4 years of her life in a Christian sect. At 6 she was playing the guitar and learning fast. By 16, she ran away from home and enrolled at Berklee College of Music. She relaced her first album, Masterpiece with the band Big Thief in 2016, age 25. Lenker has no less than 5 grammy nominations. She is now 32.
Her newest work, ‘Bright Future’ was released march 22nd.
A blurry portrait makes up the vinyl cover of ‘Bright Future’. Lenker looks almost glum, almost tired and entirely knowing. She wears a large white Stetson and fingerless gloves.
This is mediative, medicating music.
‘Real House’ opens the album. We begin with mellow, moody piano and a scratchy violin. The atmosphere is immediately thick and somehow bittersweet; a reflection on childhood, a coming to peace with the past; she sings: I wanted to be an inventor / Collected scraps to make a portal / I wanted so much for magic to be real…
The album comprises of 12 songs, three of which are singles: ‘Free Treasure’, ‘Fool’ and ‘Sadness as a Gift’, the third is something special and rare. There’s is a folk-country feel as Lenker counts in the timing; 1, 2 and 1, 2, 3, 4. It brings to mind a wide, stretching, dust-blown highway.
Lenker’s vocals are scratchy but soothing, hollow and wholesome, eerie but sweet and reminiscent of home.
Lenker explains in interview with Kyle Meredith, that through therapy, she has been able to accept “there is an inherent sadness to love” and that sadness can be an “indicator of how deep the love is”. Sadness is “like this crystal, this jewel if you let it be”. Such deep acceptance of grief bleeds through the lines of this song: you and I could see / into the same eternity / every second brimming with a majesty…
Lenker’s vocals are scratchy but soothing, hollow and wholesome, eerie but sweet and reminiscent of home. ‘Evol’, 6th on the track list, adds haunting to the list. Set to a chilling piano piece, Lenker’s voice is tight and pained: you have my heart I want it back… she asks of somebody unknown.
A rendition of Big Thief’s hit ‘Vampire Empire’ appears on Bright Future and is something of a stripped-back take on the original (which has enjoyed almost 50,000,000 streams on Spotify).
A US/European solo tour commenced on April 19th.
Lenker is unapologetic and uncompromising. She is authentic, pure and deeply human in what she does. The term ‘commercial concession’ seems not to be in her vocabulary. The result is intensely intimate and powerfully comforting.
Bright Future is truthful and beautiful, wounding but healing. It cut’s deep and leaves scars that are rich with the colours and poetry of Lenker’s Songs.