It’s April 2020, and you’re sheltered in a one-room cabin in Western Massachusetts. You’re trapped in the storm of the pandemic, having canceled your band’s tour, and on top of that, you’re still mourning from a recent breakup. What do you do with that pain, that isolation, that uncertainty? If you’re indie folk musician Adrianne Lenker, perhaps there’s nothing you can do but make music. Despite having been determined to take a break from writing music after her separation from fellow indie artist Indigo Sparke, making music is exactly what she did for the next month. In a manner befitting her rustic surroundings, she crafted her music as free from digital devices as she could, recording analogously and opting to use almost solely acoustic guitar and her own voice as instruments. By May 23, 2020, she had 11 songs she would release in an album simply called “songs.”
Nature permeates the album, both lyrically and sonically. Raindrops, flowing streams, smoldering fire, and chirping crickets are sprinkled over her bare acoustic melodies. Beyond this, each song seems to strictly follow a sonic “formula” — a melancholic yet catchy melodic guitar riff repeated and layered under vulnerable, twangy vocals. Even though this formula might produce a lack of distinction between tracks compared to albums with more instrumental or tonal variation, the experience is strikingly smooth and immersive. The fact that she is able to capture so much attention and wrench the hearts of listeners so much with so few tools is a testament to her skill as an artist.
So, first question: what is the album about? Well, it’s about a lot of things — understanding abstract subjects like emptiness and death through personification, and finding congruence between nature — as perfect and picturesque as it is — and everyday human life. It’s about birth, death, relationships, time, and numerous other cyclical things. But after you learn of Lenker’s breakup with Sparke, it’s hard to not see that in every inch of the album — all the lyrics about endings and imperfect love make that much more sense. Considering the subject matter and tone of the album, maybe this isn’t an album that most would listen to on repeat, as it can perhaps strike too much of a chord for some. At the very least, I am certainly going to take a break after this review.
So that question is answered — good job me! But that still begs another question — why am I just now reviewing “songs” more than four years after its release? I don’t know; why do you need to know? Who are you, the cops? I can review whatever I want.
“two reverse”
This song primes us for what will become frequent themes in the album — vivid, colorful imagery of nature paired with relatively raw vocals and a calming melodic guitar track. With “two reverse” being a homonym with “two rivers,” the metaphor at the center of the song compares a wilting relationship to two streams that depart, despite Lenker’s wishes to “stay, don’t stray.” The song also deals with the pain and insecurity of loving someone despite this separation. Overall the song acts as a very appropriate opener for the album tonally, lyrically, and sonically.
“ingydar”
“ingydar,” named after a beloved horse of Lenker’s aunt that died, is about cycles of nature: “Everything eats and is eaten.” Lenker communicates this unending cycle through personification — the “crow lies” and “time is fed.” The dynamics of her lyricism is on full display here — complex lyrics like “Evergreen anodyne decompounding” slot seamlessly next to comparatively more simple language — “To the raven playing hide and seek.” This song, perhaps more than any other in “songs”, is notable as a display of Lenker’s lyrical talents.
“anything”
In this more uptempo song, Lenker takes us through a romantic relationship rather rapidly. Through evocative one-bar phrases, we follow the relationship all the way to its end. Lenker rarely ever describes love in a way I’ve seen before — it’s always rooted in her own specific, intimate memories and sensory imagery: “Mango in your mouth, juice dripping / […] Wanna listen to the sound of you blinking / Wanna listen to your hands soothe.” But it’s not all happy memories: “Grocery store list now you get pissed… / Drive to the ER and they put me at risk.” But these struggles, to an extent, are a part of what love is for Lenker. Both a love song and a breakup song, it is one of the most nuanced songs about relationships I’ve ever heard.
“forwards beckon rebound”
Another homonym, this time with “forwards, back and rebound,” this song is one of the harder to interpret songs in the album for me. It certainly continues the theme of cycles, with this track depicting a complex cycle of becoming vulnerable to somebody, wanting the other to expose their vulnerabilities, and being hurt in the process, causing a separation. And more than any other track it explicitly focuses on the duality of relationships: “Villain and violent / Infant and innocent.” Not a song that particularly sticks out much from the rest, but a worthy inclusion nonetheless.
“heavy focus”
This song, for me, captures the elusiveness of time. It describes the rare but beautiful moments in life where you just want time to stop to really soak in the goodness all around you. Lenker rhythmically invites the audience, or herself, or more probably both, to “Focus, focus.” Instrumentally, this sense of pausing to reflect is portrayed by the tempo of the song slowing down and pausing right before the chorus. It’s certainly a more reflective piece.
“half return”
The song seems to be about Lenker returning to her childhood home, but as the title suggests, it’s not quite the happy return that one would expect. “The house is white” but “the lawn is dead.” She again packs a whole bunch of meaning and memory with short, one-bar phrases: “Rusty swing set, plastic slide / Push me up and down, take me for a ride.” But why exactly is this a “half return” for Lenker? Has her home changed? Or perhaps she has changed, by the experience of adulthood, and has now outgrown her home like a kid outgrows a pair of shoes. No matter the interpretation, it is a very thoughtful song and one of my favorites from the album.
“come”
In “come,” Lenker evocatively imagines her being carried to the beach by her future daughter to die. We continue with death as a cycle as Lenker calls on her daughter to “Take my life into your life.” This life-death cycle is expressed musically too. We begin with stillness and sounds of nature as slow, almost hesitant guitar plucks eventually fade into a faster and more consistent tempo, until we eventually fade back into stillness at the end. We feel the song itself come to life then die again. It’s an intensely sad song, but so engaging that I consistently forget it’s one of the longest tracks on the album.
“zombie girl”
Through “zombie girl,” Lenker deals with the emptiness she finds herself with, most likely in the relation to Sparke’s parting. She dreams happily of a “zombie girl,” a girl that was gone and somehow returned, before moving onto confronting emptiness more directly. She personifies emptiness and desires to come to terms with it: “Emptiness tell me about your nature / Maybe I’ve been getting you wrong.” At the end, she asks repeatedly “What’s on your mind?” But is she asking the zombie girl, or emptiness? Perhaps it doesn’t matter, as to Lenker they mean the same thing. Another song that is endlessly engaging to interpret.
“not a lot, just forever”
So much is conveyed by the title alone. She desires an everlasting love, to be, “intertwined sewn together,” but is that truly possible? Lenker delves into relationship struggles, casting a harsh light onto her own imperfections “I wanna be your wife / So I hold you to my knife / … I bash around the house.” Intensely romantic and uncomfortable all at once, this song conveys a gamut of emotions like no other song I know. The guitar melody alone rips my heart out. If there is one track to listen to out of all of the others, it’s this one.
“dragon eyes”
In “dragon eyes,” love mostly takes the form of small domestic moments, rather than grand, large-scale metaphor: “Carnations in the vase / Unfold your clothes out of the case / I just want a place with you.” We also continue themes of love as a natural and transformative force. As “not a lot just forever” imagines love being akin to a rock bearing weather, in “dragon eyes” Lenker sings: “As the coastline is shaped by the wind … / You are changing me.” It’s not a particularly flashy song, but it certainly puts Lenker’ lyricism on display.
“my angel”
Lenker sings about her guardian angel, a comforting and protective presence that has stuck with her since childhood. We open on two minutes of vocal-less, slow, reflective guitar strumming — an appropriate tone for the last song of the album. Curiously, however, the song, and by extension the album as a whole, ends extremely abruptly. Paired with the subject matter of angels, heavenly beings, it feels as if the album suddenly dies on us. Either way it feels like Lenker is in good hands from here — against all her insecurities and vulnerabilities and doubts, she has her guardian angel to protect her.
Favorite Tracks: “not a lot, just forever,” “anything,” and “half return”
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