Bright Future is not, in what I am sure will be a journalistic refrain heard around the world, a sarcastic title playing on the fact we have no future, something Lenker alludes to in every side street and alleyway the record has to offer. Instead, take it sincerely, as one should with all radical advice. From the opening tumbling of pianos to those same pianos coasting away the closer, Lenker is acutely aware of our shared, oncoming endpoint, but more importantly, its utter pointlessness. If Bright Future is to be believed, we are so very alive.
Lenker has been synthesizing her increasingly hard to pin mix of folk, country, and psychedelia in giant steps with every solo and band release; she’s a cartographer mapping out the crevasses and nooks of her sound, resting in a valley here with gentle acoustics and patient keys. “Real House” takes breathers in between each hammering of a key, with a Phil Elverum-esque melody fit to render your heart into mush. She talks about quite a bit, and nothing much at all; a childhood dream, her mother crying, birds flying, freedom. She throws the pieces up and doesn’t so much try to catch them as much as she’s content to see where they land.
“Real House” as an opener gives a direction and kill switch
to the rest of the record, as each of the following tracks takes a straightforwardly poetic approach in dissecting modern love and its
post-modern implications. Her opening thoughts were of simplicity and
sadness in their least world-weary forms.
“Fool” is of the more gracious tracks present, as it lets
the listener be mesmerized by its cyclical, angular finger-picking
instead of paying full attention to its devastating lyrics. Lenker
deftly understands she may have to dangle some keys just to keep us poor
suckers off the edge. Even though it exists as one of Lenker’s most
unfiltered and raw offerings from a production standpoint, the additions
of strings, keys, atmospheres, and harmonies are a laid blanket, one
that gets ripped off like Lucy moving the football before Charlie can
kick it, but a blanket nonetheless.
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. I try
to convince them that the point isn’t the end of the world, but each
moment in between; a kiss today is an assurance in case tomorrow never
comes. You can try to get through to someone, that an end and a happy
middle aren’t mutually exclusive, but you end up like Lenker:
hopelessly in love and hoping that you keep getting the chance.
