13. Adrianne LenkerInstrumentals
This was a lockdown album, I think. I don’t know who Adrianne was with, but I think she was with one other person who was wiring things up and capturing her playing so freely. It feels like you’re privileged to be listening to someone play for themselves, for their own reasons only. The idea of it being in a cabin somewhere in a time when everyone was kind of shut down is very evocative. The album is almost uncomfortably intimate at times – maybe that’s not the right word – but intimate to a point where you feel such a privilege to be there. You can feel the room when you listen to it, you can see the woods. The way they’ve set the mics up it’s like you’re almost in the guitar sometimes and other times you’re next to her when she plays.
I love it too when the chimes suddenly come in. So many instruments like chimes have been ruined by very sloppily made new age and chill out music. I feel like we can’t throw all that stuff away just because it’s been misused. With the Psychedelic Therapy album, I was trying to take that genre really seriously. There are elements in this that I think do the same, just to unashamedly having all these wind chimes filling the room. Having birdsong on a track can be ruined if not done properly but it’s also like: actually why not use it, when it can be amazing? You’ve just got to try and decondition from the ways in which it’s been misused.
My girlfriend at the time was a big fan of Adrianne and Big Thief and played me this. Instrumentals is the one that really got me because it’s a genre I wish there was more of. It’s basically ambient, but it’s acoustic guitar. I could listen to stuff like that for hours. I hope she makes more like this.
