Yahoo News Review: Adrianne Lenker brings a 'mesmerising and melodic' set to Aviva Studios
For Thursday night's show, the original, sponsorless name for Aviva Studios feels more appropriate.
This place was originally to be known as Factory International and over the past decade or so, Adrianne Lenker has been a one-woman musical warehouse unto herself, marking herself out as one of her generation’s greatest songwriters both by fronting the indie folk outfit Big Thief and by establishing herself as a prolific solo artist.
There is nothing production-line about her work, though; across five records each with her band and on her own, her songcraft has been consistently exquisite. Last month, she released Bright Future, an album that won her rave reviews and comparisons with Joni Mitchell.
It also sees her make a hefty jump up to bigger stages; her last solo show in Manchester was at the 250-capacity Pink Room at YES, a far cry from Aviva’s Hall, which welcomes a 1500-person full house in its all-seated configuration tonight. To begin with, there is a little uncertainty as to how she’ll take to it; seated, alone, the stage looks massive around her. And then, she starts playing, and the effect is mesmerising.
Something that is perhaps overlooked about Lenker when she’s with Big Thief is that she is an astonishing guitarist, weaving fabulous intricate melodic tapestries with delicate, deeply-felt playing. It comes to the fore when she plays solo, with her work on the likes of ‘dragon eyes’, ‘half return’ and ‘symbol’ genuinely on the level of Nick Drake or Bert Jansch.
Taken together with her nimble, floaty vocals, which often belie the emotional tumult at the core of her songs, she has the room in rapturous silence, as she wanders through both her own and Big Thief’s catalogue and cheerily admitting that there is no written setlist.
Later, she brings out Nick Hakim, who played a stellar support slot of his own, to join her on piano; by now, the crowd have loosened up a little, and their collaborative take on Lenker’s ‘zombie girl’ is so spellbinding that, at one audience member’s request, they immediately play it a second time, so pitch-perfectly that she remarks afterwards that she wished that had been the take to make the album.
Hakim’s subtle playing lends extra depth to the likes of recent single ‘Sadness as a Gift’ and, as a set closer, the track that perhaps best bridges the gap between Lenker’s solo work and Big Thief, the woozy ‘Vampire Empire’. The set is not entirely without fault; a great deal of time is given over to tuning up between songs, so much so that had she brought a guitar tech with her, she might have been able to play two or three more songs.
The long gaps would be fine if Lenker’s stage banter was on the level of her songwriting, but - a touching anecdote about local music scene legend Bernie Phillips aside - it is not. Which is funny, because the evening’s high point comes when she plays ‘Real House’ during the encore - the opening track from her latest album, and one that has split opinion with its minimal nature and meandering, conversational lyrical tone.
Live, it works spectacularly - as things so often seem to for this singular talent.
