Adrianne Lenker - Songs and Instrumentals

Having released a pair of Billboard 200-charting albums in 2019, Big Thief were on tour in Europe in early 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic put an abrupt end to plans. Bandleader Adrianne Lenker returned home to New York, then left for safer quarters in a remote part of Massachusetts upon learning of an available mountain rental near friends. Alone with not much more than her guitar in a spartan one-room cabin, she was taken with the acoustics of the space and soon invited engineer Philip Weinrobe to join her to record an acoustic album. Written mostly on-site, songs and instrumentals turned into a double album consisting of 11 solo songs and a set of guitar and windchime improvisations. Recorded on a borrowed Otari 8 Track tape machine, it begins with a false start and the folk-style "two reverse," a -- for solo Lenker -- typically intimate, vulnerable song consisting only of brittle voice, guitar, and shaker. Much of the album continues in kind, with subtle variations that include the