Review: Adrianne Lenker Releases "Fool"
- by Peter Källman
- in Reviews
Adrianne Lenker has released a drumless and bassless banger titled "Fool." This track would go well over the melting winter snow and a cup of tea. Along with the track follows a video—an extremely wholesome video. The video captures a group of people in cowboy hats dancing weirdly and freely to the track. It also has dogs living their best life. The video goes very well with the song. If you are a regular fan of Adrianne Lenker, you might find that her voice and melodic soul are very well represented in this song, but the instrumentation is a bit different to what you have heard before. Anyhow, it all comes together very well.
Many of you might know, and many might not: Adrianne Lenker is part of the acclaimed band Big Thief. We can do a whole deep dive on that band as well, but that will have to be when they release a song. This release is said to be part of her upcoming solo album, titled "Bright Future." The album is scheduled for release on March 22, 2024, through the label 4AD. I personally could not be more excited. She has already released the songs "Sadness As A Gift" and "Ruined," also to be featured on the album. In this day and age, it is very common to release single after single until you gather enough for an album. Then, you release the singles as an album. Personally, I don’t have anything against that. Whatever works for the market is what works. The timeframe in which you have to release 5-8 singles consistently (the length of an album) might not be too long so that the songs fall out of relevancy, but just enough that when people hear them again it feels like a breeze of fresh air.
One beautiful thing about this song is that it is evoking joy. You might think this sounds stereotypical, but I find that songs which try to evoke true joy, like how you would feel joy playing with your friends as a kid, are hard to find. This is not the temporary happiness you might get from pursuing fast thrills, not the happiness you feel when you get a new car, or the happiness from gaining popularity. This is just the pure stuff, reflected both sonically in "Fool" but also in the video, friends dancing and cute dogs, without any other prejudices or preconceived notions. The album’s co-producer Phillip Weinrobe is even quoted for expressing just this very lively and joyous nature of the track.
A lot of people might consider folk music sort of static on paper. But this track by Adrianne and really her whole catalog proves that people are hungry for an active role in the evolution of sounds. It is hard and to some even uninteresting to pinpoint the exact genre her music is in. The track has elements of folk and is very guitar-focused. I would like to say I hear something else in there with the guitar. Sort of similar to the “midwest-emo” style riffs that you hear every so often on YouTube, but not spot on. Whatever it is, I am all for it. Go and check it out; you almost have to.
