21st Century Music: Adrianne Lenker and Big Thief
21st Century Music are playlists and profiles that focus on artists that have released their music since 2000. These highlight new(er) acts that continue the sound and spirit of the older acts that are the focus of Ceremony. Click on the streaming service of your choice below to listen to the playlist as you read along.
In today’s music world – a cacophony of choice, bombast, niches, and personalities – it’s hard for artists to make their way and rise above. Within all the tumult have been a couple of persistent trends over the past ten years. The first has been a varied, vibrant, and impressive indie music scene, with the majors all but having abandoned experimental and risky music and artists. The second has been, within that scene, a surprising focus on folk music and earnest, unadorned delivery; most likely as a counterbalance to the mainstream trends towards showy, electronic, or rhythm-based music. In both these trends we’ve seen a place for honest, hardworking, skilled, and genuine artists able to find a following worthy of their talent and output. On the intersection of these indie-folk trends have been Adrianne Lenker and her band, Big Thief.
After a gradual start, the pace of quality output from Lenker and Big Thief has been impressive and the increasing attention to their work has been growing like a fast rolling snowball. I sense Adrianne and the band are just doing their thing, and whether people pay attention is less of a concern, they’re just working it. They’ve acknowledged having turned down many promotional and publicity opportunities that didn’t fit with the band’s values and approach to their music.
Adrianne as a young girl
The story of Big Thief revolves around Lenker, whose background is as original as it comes and explains a lot about her approach to music. Her parents were born-again Christians in their early twenties who belonged to a cult in Indiana when Adrianne was born. They left the cult when she was still young and entered into a nomadic life, living out of a van before settling around Minneapolis. Her parents split when she was twelve. Her father, John Lenker, was a musician and had trained Adrianne’s musical talent. They released an album together, Stages of the Sun, in 2006 when she was just thirteen. Five songs were written by her and another four co-written with her dad, who wrote an additional three of his own. That sent her on a music-driven lifestyle, leading her to apply to the Berklee College of Music in Boston, an intimidating prospect given she didn’t go to high school and had to attain her GED when she was sixteen. But she got in, attending on a scholarship provided by Susan Tedeschi (Tedeschi Trucks Band), and achieved her degree in 2012, her talent by that point, unmistakeable.
Meek & Lenker
Lenker relocated to Brooklyn and self-released a solo album in 2014, Hours Were the Birds (recorded in Minnesota), that displayed her deft touch with words, phrasing, and the acoustic sound. Sleeping on a floor in a New York warehouse with a dozen other people while waitressing on the upper west side, she started to think about packing it in and returning to Minnesota when she connected with another Berklee grad (originally from Wimberley, Texas), Alexander Buckley ‘Buck’ Meek. They had performed on the same bill once in Boston but were not friends until they met in New York.
Lenker and Meek collaborated on a pair of EPs, A-sides and B-sides, also self-released in 2014. They were sparse, acoustic songs that hinted at the interesting styling of Adrianne’s song writing. Indeed, the common line through this entire playlist is Lenker’s voice. Channeling old-school folk icons like Joan Baez and Joni Mitchell, her distinct, natural, and effortless voice moves between subtle phrases and lilting effects that give the songs, even in their barest moments, incredible personality and resonance. If her voice doesn’t click for you, it will be hard to get into this playlist.
In 2015, Adrianne and Buck came together in Brooklyn with Max Oleartchik (bass), who Meek had met while at Berklee, and Jason Berger (drums) to form Big Thief. The name of the band came from a workshop in which Lenker and Meek had explored the idea of thief that built an identity on the collective conscious and ideas of others. Now, Lenker’s acoustic folk, blues, and roots sound had a rhythm section with which to fill it out and tip it into a rock edge. Signing with Saddle Creek Records out of Omaha, Nebraska, Big Thief released their first single, “Masterpiece,” in January 2016. It was the title track of the album released the following May. Lenker is the sole song writer for the band, and thus why I’ve chosen to blend her solo and band career in this playlist.
Masterpiece was a fantastic introduction and immediately one of the strongest LPs released this decade. The song, “Masterpiece,” jumps out not only in this playlist but against Lenker’s entire library of music. The power chords and deep resonance of the song, paired with her affecting vocal performance and intoxicating phrasing, captured a moment the band has not been able to match. The album had many more and varied moments with which to draw the listener in, but not in as forthright a way as the title track. Indeed, the typical nature of Lenker’s songs are to embed themselves in you through repeated listens. First impressions often strike the ear as bland or typical, then grow more pleasant and intriguing before finally melting the heart as the discovered moments of joy reveal themselves. It was the moments. Many of the songs on Masterpiece had a fractured, broken-up quality to them, often changing pace and mood in a heartbeat, but in almost every song there was a passage which grabbed the ear, the mind, and the heart, and left you, the listener, absorbed and reflective. These songs demanded attention and appreciation, which is rare in modern music.
Big Thief in 2016: James Krivchenia, Buck Meek, Adrianne Lenker, & Max Oleartchik
Big Thief followed the LP with two additional singles that year, “Mother” and “Dandelion.” During that time Berger was replaced on drums by James Krivchenia, who had been an engineer on the first recordings. “Mother” offered the typical transfer of mood and energy established on their album. An acoustic and bright song suddenly morphed into a darkly swirling powerhouse before devolving into a fractured, sparse outro. It was an impressive song that only delivered if you stuck with it. “Dandelion” offered a more ambient and expansive version of their acoustic sound within a beautiful, graceful composition.
Big Thief followed with a second album in 2017, Capacity, that failed to match the subtle brilliance of their debut, but was a strong LP, nonetheless. A little noisier, dissonant, and fractured, the album experimented more, which was to be commended, but resulted in many songs and the album hanging together less well, resulting in a less engaging and seductive result. Of course, there are the moments, which abound in Big Thief’s music, but the payoff seemed less cathartic than it did on Masterpiece.
A photo I took of Adrianne performing at Longboat Hall in Toronto, February 2019
The next year, 2018, proved to be a productive writing period for Lenker, resulting in her issuing her second solo LP, abysskiss. Again, it was a sparse album of acoustic songs but the maturity and polish of her writing was more evident than on her debut from four years prior. Songs like “cradle” and “symbol” delivered exquisite ambience and blends of Adrianne’s guitar and voice as to come across like a holistic presence. Her use of layered vocals provided beautiful depth to the songs. “Symbol” reminded of an acoustic take on Radiohead’s style. I was fortunate to catch her in an intimate, and rather casual, performance in Toronto promoting this album. She repeatedly tuned her guitar and engaged in mild banter with the audience throughout (including having an audience member re-string her guitar). Adrianne seemed very intense and shy, and with her halting, youthful voice came across like a friend, as one of the crowd – and thus the secret ingredient of her success, to connect with fans in a genuine and unassuming way, without artifice. She has been an unassuming and appealing dose of ‘real’ among the masses of over-hyped and outsized personalities of modern music.
In 2019 we’ve seen the return of Big Thief with two albums and a massive tour, of which I saw them for the first time last week. They are now releasing their music through the renowned label, 4AD. These days, releasing two albums in one year is a rarity and is refreshing to behold. The album is dying in the age of streaming and artists should be releasing music more frequently to stay present and in the public conscious. Big Thief appears to be benefitting from the quality and volume of their output, as appreciation and attention are growing, as witnessed by the sold-out show in Toronto and the appreciative response from the audience.
Despite the volume and rapidity of their releases, Big Thief still works around the album concept and thus the two LPs this year are different musical offerings, each with their own personality. The release in May, U.F.O.F., rivalled Masterpiece for capturing the band in its full flush, where the force and subtleties of Lenker’s writing could be captured to their most dramatic effect. A couple of songs from her solo LP, abysskiss, returned in band performances for the LP (“From” and “Terminal Paradise”). Again, moving between mid- and down-tempo songs and ranging from sparse acoustic songs to dissonant rockers, the lovely moments once again abounded. There were even shoegaze influences in songs like the title track and the haunting, “Jenni” (disappointingly not on YouTube from 4AD or even as a fan-captured live shot). U.F.O.F. rivalled Masterpiece in quality and thus ascended to the upper ranks of quality releases this decade.
Two Hands, the album released this month (October) and the one the band was focused on in the show I saw, is more down-tempo and acoustically focused. Perhaps because I’ve been writing my recently published shoegaze profile and my general penchant for full-band rockers, their show and the album didn’t grab me in the way I’d hoped. Too quiet, acoustic, and plodding in many places, it was not what I’d anticipated for one of my most anticipated shows of the year. However, after a few listens of the album, I’m warming up to it and Lenker is having her usual, unassuming, subtle warming effect. Unquestionably, the standout track on the new LP is “Not,” which I’d already suggest rivals “Masterpiece” as Big Thief’s best song. When Lenker’s beautiful phrasing, passion, and the band’s full complement of instrumentation come together, there aren’t many bands today that can compete.
Adrianne Lenker and Big Thief are a unique presence in our world. They live all over the world (Lenker hasn’t settled anywhere yet but seems headed for Minnesota when her extensive touring finally takes a break, Meek is in Topanga, CA while Krivchenia is in L.A., and Oleartchik lives in his native Israel) but perform in a pure, intimate, and understated manner that is a balm in an age of saturated electronics, Auto-Tune, and hype. I find most acoustic music today unbearably indistinguishable, and for Adrianne and her band to have cut through, I give them full credit. Certainly, it’s her voice that’s a big part of what captures the attention, but then it’s the quality of the songs, melodies, and moods that has made Adrianne Lenker and Big Thief one of the increasingly most appreciated and celebrated bands of the 21st century.
The Playlist - song \ album \ artist (year)
Jonathan \ a-sides \ Adrianne Lenker & Buck Meek (2014)
New York City \ b-sides \ Adrianne Lenker & Buck Meek (2014)
Steamboat \ Hours Were the Birds \ Adrianne Lenker (2014)
Indiana \ Hours Were the Birds \ Adrianne Lenker (2014)
Masterpiece \ Masterpiece \ Big Thief (2016)
Real Love \ Masterpiece \ Big Thief (2016)
Interstate \ Masterpiece \ Big Thief (2016)
Paul \ Masterpiece \ Big Thief (2016)
Velvet Ring \ Masterpiece \ Big Thief (2016)
Mother \ non-album single \ Big Thief (2016)
Dandelion \ non-album single \ Big Thief (2016)
Watering \ Capacity \ Big Thief (2017)
Mythological Beauty \ Capacity \ Big Thief (2017)
Haley \ Capacity \ Big Thief (2017)
from \ abysskiss \ Adrianne Lenker (2018)
cradle \ abysskiss \ Adrianne Lenker (2018)
symbol \ abysskiss \ Adrianne Lenker (2018)
Contact \ U.F.O.F. \ Big Thief (2019)
U.F.O.F \ U.F.O.F. \ Big Thief (2019)
Cattails \ U.F.O.F. \ Big Thief (2019)
Jenni\ U.F.O.F. \ Big Thief (2019) (not on YouTube)
Forgotten Eyes \ Two Hands \ Big Thief (2019)
The Toy \ Two Hands \ Big Thief (2019)
Shoulders \ Two Hands \ Big Thief (2019)
Not \ Two Hands \ Big Thief (2019)
Usually the album covers reveal enough to know what they are, but not so for Lenker and Big Thief. Therefore, in order, a-sides b-sides, Hours Were the Birds, Masterpiece, Capacity, abysskiss, U.F.O.F., and Two Hands
