Kelly Kirwan
Adrianne Lenker is twenty-five years old. At first I repeated this in my empty kitchen, as if an invisible, omnipresent voice would confirm or deny. This isn’t to belittle her age or ignore all the success stories that belong to child prodigies (although we know they can sometimes take a turn). Mostly, it was her voice—with which I had only just been acquainted—and how it quavered and soared, imbued with a wisdom that we often don’t expect from someone so young. But Adrianne Lenker's life has left her with a sage mind, a rueful eye, and an affinity for indie folk that's on full display in her band, Big Thief.
Following up their full-length debut, Masterpiece, Big Thief has returned with their sophomore offering, Capacity. The cover is a true picture of adolescence—a boy holding a baby, perhaps a young father and son. It’s a snapshot that is brimming with a sense of nostalgia. It feels like it was plucked from a shoebox closed decades ago, the sort of photo your parents show you after a few glasses of wine. You marvel at how different they looked, still grappling with the fact that they had a life (not dissimilar to your own) before you ever arrived. From this image, you can begin to parse out the themes to come on the eleven tracks inside—the nature of our ever-evolving lives and who they intertwine with, and of course, what meaning we ascribe to it all.
Take "Pretty Things," which comes to life with revolving, richly resonant guitar strings alongside Lenker’s soft voice, which rises delicately before falling again into murmurs that feel both intimate and nonchalant, like an expected truth uttered with a shrug of the shoulder. “There’s a meeting in my thighs / Where in thunder and lightning / Men are baptized / In their anger and fighting / Their deceit and lies.” It’s a line that I came back to not only for its poetry, but for its grit. It’s beautiful without dressing up scenarios into neat, digestible euphemisms. As Lenker sings in an array of high notes for her finish, “Don’t take me for a fool / There’s a woman inside of me / There’s one inside of you, too / And she don’t always do pretty things.”
Then there’s "Mythological Beauty," with its percussive frame and passing resemblance to '90s alternative. It has an easy pace, as if we’re watching a reel of old family videos, yet it’s once again filled with that aforementioned bluntness. It’s a wonderful song, tracing the story of Lenker’s mother: from “Seventeen you took his cum / And you gave birth to your first life,” to when she held the life-threatening gash on Lenker’s forehead as a small child. It’s a song thats tinged with a certain sadness, and yet a simultaneous willingness to forgive. Capacity is a narrative of young families, finding one’s way, and how all those universal themes are packed into such significant, individual memories. It’s a trip worth taking.