The Big Thief singer-songwriter returns with another solo folk album – minimally exquisite, delicate, at times heartbreakingly, with a title that is ambiguous - a future that could be beautiful and dazzling, but also blinding and burning. Joined by friends Nick Hakim (piano), Josefin Runsteen (violin) and Mat Davidson (guitar), the opener, Real House, was recorded in a take where the latter two decided to hold back their instruments, letting Lenker’s voice be fully exposed alongside gentle playing by Hakim. It’s a minimal, starkly beautiful number recalling childhood memories, two of which standout involving two contexts of a hypodermic needle. A bold poignant start, but the second track, a former Song of the Day here, is gets to the gorgeous heart of the album - Sadness Is A Gift, with fabulously potent, vivid, compact lyrics, such as: “Snow falling, I try to keep from calling.” The next, Fool, has lovely intertwined string picking weaving a woozy tapestry to create a feeling of confused, messy love. No Machine is another gentle, lilting love song. The pace picks up the syncopated strumming of Vampire Empire gives a new acoustic feel to one of her Big Thief numbers, and has a Dylanesque feel. And so the album brings gem after gem, Evol (playing with backwards spelling of words) to Candleflame, Cell Phone to Donut Seam, which riffs on the phrase “don’t it seem”. But at the close, while Sadness Is A Gift felt like perfection, the last track, Ruined, is surely up there with it, a sublime melody capturing love’s hope and melancholy, a dreamlike lament that turns further and further into gentle delirium. A songwriter and singer of phenomenal maturity and perceptive gifts. Out on 4AD.
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