Bright Future

Bright Future, though, is not only her most impressive solo album to date, but it’s also a genuine competitor for the best album she’s ever been involved with.

A stunning set of songs, this is an album that whispers its impact long after the last note has finished.

Bright Future consolidates the view that Lenker is now one of the most distinctive and powerful voices of her generation and these new songs will only deepen the intensity with which her music is received.

Each time I play even a moment of this record back, my ears ring and hum and vibrate my head as if they’re rejecting another listen to its mad, sad glory.

Bright Future is the type of no-filter album with enough variety and poignancy that each song is bound to be somebody's favorite.

Lenker’s writing is always in conversations with traditional songwriting modes, but her soft sense of self and fascination with the surreal makes her art compellingly and unmistakably individual.

Filled to the brim with pathos and lived-in melancholy, she has crafted yet another jewel for her ever-expanding crown. It might not be quite as cohesive as songs was, but it benefits from being more varied, and from having some of her most affecting vocal performances.

Compared to its highly-praised predecessor, Bright Future might come up just short, brought down by its occasional unevenness in quality and weaker coherence as a full listen, but this latest album contains a multitude of Lenker’s finest work yet, while suggesting her reign at the top of indie-dom might be only just beginning. This is a triumphant work from an ascendant artist, and, oh yeah, also one of the finer folk albums of recent years.

The free-flowing and intuitive nature of the sessions is apparent in the recordings, which have the amiable looseness of first takes. You get the sense, sometimes, that they are figuring out a song’s ideal arrangement as they track it.

Bright Future’s recording style mirrors the listener’s experience: as time goes on, these songs and the emotions associated with them will inevitably deepen, transmute, and attach themselves to the memory of different people.

Returning with her sixth solo record ‘Bright Future’, the Big Thief frontwoman achieves a newfound lyrical self-assuredness here.

There are more hooks here than on Lenker’s previous albums, 2020’s great but ethereal Songs, and its companion album, the lyricless Instrumentals. Tracks like the gentle, mellifluous “Cell Phone Says” showcase Lenker’s skill with a soulful folk guitar riff, while the lively and finger-picked “Fool” is a standout.

Bright Future slots in comfortably with everything she has done to date and brings a greater sense of being of a moment in time.

Brave in its deeply honest expression, it’s a beautiful record that tactfully captures the often confusing and contradicting feelings when truly in love.

While Lenker included a couple of songs on abysskiss that were later reworked as full-band songs on the masterful U.F.O.F. (“Terminal Paradise” and “From”), here the acoustic version sounds like a step backward and doesn’t feel like it belongs, especially given this album’s 45-minute runtime. Nonetheless, there’s plenty of gorgeous material here, offering further evidence of Lenker’s subtle and surprising songwriting.

This album is still very much a Lenker solo project with minimal arrangements and honest songwriting but thanks to some fearlessness and a bit of patience, she can make Bright Future stand out from the rest of her solo work.

The results have the in-the-room intimacy of Lenker's best work. [Apr 2024, p.91]

Lenker collects vivid details and lets them amplify each other, until the deeply personal becomes somehow universal. [Mar 2024, p.29]

With Bright Future, Lenker stands on the confidence of her talent, complemented by production choices that neither distract nor detract from the emotion of her songwriting.