In the heart of Downtown Boston’s Theater District, Adrianne Lenker sparkled for a sold-out concert at the Boch Shubert Theater on Tuesday night, November 12th. The folk singer-songwriter fondly returned to her college town for a two-night stint as the “Bright Future” tour draws to a close, bringing a performance of sincerity that emulates her discography. Lenker’s music is the soft inside of a tree after the bark has been peeled back. She combined together a perfect gumbo of a show consisting of solo work, sentimental sounds from Lenker’s band, Big Thief, and a surprise performance from folk artist Mary Remington.
Self-proclaimed “sorta-recluse” and rural Big Sur, California native Suzanne Vallie opened with an intimate keyboard set of epic-style blues and a voice warm and crackly as a campfire. Vallie served a perfect antidote to the first properly cold night of the season in Boston with lyrics that were like chicken soup to the ears. She spoke with a ribbony softness comparable to Jean Ritchie, the “Mother of Folk.”
“Bright Future”, Lenker’s sixth album as a solo artist, describes a specific phenomenon of softening with age. Memories become fonder, and the routine of “love without measure,” as she muses in the song “Free Treasure,” is revolutionary instead of mundane. Lenker’s performance probes at the nature and intersection of love and loss, and what a profound gift, treasure, it is to be capable of feeling so intensely.
The second song of the album and the second to play was “Sadness As A Gift,” declaring that the grief of a love lost is still triumphant. Lenker reframes the betrayal of “chance” by inviting the audience to consider the magnitude of loss as an indication of the magnitude of love. Lenker’s performance shows a woman on the precipice of succumbing to the combination of grief and yearning but vocally comes back to herself with the control of a master musician.
Lenker was accompanied onstage for most of the show, sans a six-song solo intermission in the middle of the set, by pianist Nick Hakim and violinist Josefin Runsteen, both of whom are credited on her latest album for their backing vocals and instrumentation. Lenker and Hakim met in a pre-college summer program at Berklee College of Music in Boston, a time defined by the beauty of being a young artist in the city.
“I thought it was the most romantic thing ever,” Lenker said about living in a Cambridge apartment with fellow artists and musicians. She trailed off, beguiled by her own memories of the city. The message resonated particularly with this audience, littered with college students around the area in need of reminding that they’re living the years they’ll someday tell stories about.
In true folk fashion, Lenker, Hakim, and Runsteen, “made do” with what they had, turning refined vocal and instrumental accompaniments into the sounds of nature and city life. Lenker’s slap flick technique during “Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You” and “Simulation Swarm” imitated the thumping of a heartbeat. Runsteen mimicked the sounds of crunching leaves and harsh winds by stroking and plucking violin strings, blew childlike lip bubbles during “Free Treasure,” and whistled like a distant steam train during “symbol.”
The acoustics inside the Shubert Theater were beyond complimentary; it was an instrument itself. Runsteen’s ability to mimic sounds combined with Hakim’s harmonies took me to the full-body, car stereo experience the first time I heard “symbol” when I was 14 years old in my dad’s Nissan.
Lenker’s lyrical imagery feels real enough to close your eyes and picture in front of you while also relying on the skewed reality of recollection. The stage light reflecting off Lenker’s guitar was no obstacle; it only enhanced the dizziness of longing so present in her discography. For the few minutes of playtime, each song gets, Lenker, suspends time through the threads of fate on her guitar. Applause after each song was slow and foreign as the audience broke out of her trance, familiarizing themselves again with their appendages like a newborn fawn, left with both the soreness of a lifetime lived and the innocence of sudden youth. At any instant could I look down and find dirt stains and bloody scrapes on my knees reminiscent of my years at recess.
The first half of the show was meditative, pausing to introduce the twangy, down-on-their-luck sounds from Mary Remington, fellow Berklee alum and dear friend to Lenker. The song “Mary” from Big Thief’s 2017 album, “Capacity,” was inspired by Lenker’s friendship with Remington. The two donned complimentary hats made by Lenker’s own grandmother, Meemaw, as they sang their joint song, “Dresser Hill,” performed with the Dust Bowl-esque tiredness of coming home to a loved one at the end of a long day and the shared silence being enough.
On par with themes of sentimentality and aging, Lenker gave insight into her artist grandmother’s contribution to the tour, designing the promotional poster and hand-making over 200 unique hats to sell at each tour stop.
“Bright Future” as an album ages the listener, but as she sings in the song “Incomprehensible,” aging is a feat: “My mother and my grandma, my great-grandmother too/They wrinkle like the river, sweeten like the dew.” Compared to the widely acclaimed pieces from Lenker’s 2020 album, “songs,” that describe feelings and memories just out of reach, “Bright Future” is all about looking right ahead, into the light of what’s to come.
She owns all the facets of being human, searching for pride in moments of vulnerability or loss. Before her performance of “Incomprehensible,” Lenker bumped her borrowed glasses into the microphone, prompting one of many giggling fits throughout the night.
“Being a human can be clunky, huh?” she said.
In her performance and lyrics, Lenker still carries along with her the wounds of her younger years, admitting that “my heart has holes in it,” in the song “Donut Seam,” but she brings maturity to her performances of older songs in her discography. Where once she was dissected, out in the open, she comes proudly adorning fleshy-pink scar tissue.
When Hakim and Runsteen return to finish the show, it turns from spiritual to transcendent. Phones were particularly scarce during the latter half, a blasphemous act of irreverence during such a gripping emotional experience exhibited by the intermittent sniffling in the audience and the woman in front of me wracking in violent sobs.
The night ended with a standing ovation and encore of the Big Thief song, “Masterpiece,” a fitting summation of the entire night. The audience left with light hearts and the heavy memory of an irreplaceable performance.
“Everything that we’ve all been through has brought us to this exact moment,” Lenker said.
One Response
This is more of a personal essay than a review. Just sayin.