Record Review: Adrianne Lenke’s ‘songs’

TODAY @ 3PM on the FTC Sound Stream……Grace Bonamico hosts Retrospective Album Review: Adrianne Lenke’s songs.

READ Grace Bonamico’s handy song guide as a companion piece for today’s special radio broadcast.

REVIEW:   songs: Adrianne Lenker’s quiet masterpiece

Adrianne Lenker’s 2020 album songs feel less like a traditional release and more like an artifact uncovered by chance, or even a diary written in pencil. Recorded live to tape in a one-room cabin during lockdown, the album carries the texture of its environment: creaking wood, shifting daylight, and the muffled stillness of isolation, all of which are enhanced by the fact that the tracks were recorded with the cabin doors open. Every track feels touched by that solitude, shaped by the rare experience of being alone long enough for memory to rise unfiltered.

Across eleven songs, Lenker constructs a world built on intimacy and emotional clarity. The record is deceptively simple, just guitar, voice, and atmosphere, yet within that simplicity lies astonishing depth. Nothing is overworked, but nothing is accidental. The beauty of songs emerges through their raw edges, quiet breaths, and the slight tremors in the guitar strings. Even the silences feel deliberate, as if Lenker trusts the listener enough to let the pauses speak for themselves.

1. “two reverse”

The opening track, which started as a voice memo, feels like the album taking a long, steady breath. Lenker’s voice drifts over soft fingerpicked chords, sounding both weary and hopeful. Her melodies circle back on themselves, mirroring the feeling of retracing emotional steps after heartbreak, walking back down a familiar path, hoping to notice what was missed. The song eases the listener into the album’s rhythm: gentle, contemplative, unguarded.

2. “ingydar”

“ingydar” is almost like a dream unfolding in fragments. Images flicker between the real and the surreal, as though Lenker is sifting through memories she isn’t sure she wants to revisit. The melody is sparse and steady, allowing her lyrics to carry the weight of the story. It’s a quiet meditation on the memories that linger even after we try to shut them out.

3. “anything”

One of the album’s emotional pillars, “anything,” is fragile and devastating in its simplicity. Lenker sings with an honesty that feels almost too intimate to witness, a confession whispered into a quiet room. With only her guitar accompanying her, the song becomes a portrait of love, longing, and the questions people often avoid asking themselves. It feels like the moment when truth finally slips through.

4. “forwards beckon rebound”

This track introduces a subtle restlessness. The title captures the tension: a pull toward the future and an anchor in the past. Lenker’s guitar patterns feel like pacing, each line stepping forward only to turn back again. It’s the sound of someone wrestling with old habits, trying to choose movement over repetition.

5. “heavy focus”

Even on an album defined by calm, “heavy focus” stands out as especially delicate. The song feels like staring too long at a memory until its edges blur. The melody floats lightly, but the emotions beneath it are dense, a quiet ache wrapped in soft guitar. Lenker invites the listener to sit still and feel the weight of what’s unspoken.

6. “half return”

“half return” drifts through childhood memories colored by adult understanding. The landscapes she describes feel familiar yet distant, as if seeing a childhood home from across a field. The repetition has a lulling effect, creating a dreamlike state in which the past and present overlap. It’s a song about trying to reconnect with earlier versions of yourself and realizing how far away they’ve become.

7. “come”

Written years earlier as an imagined message to a future daughter, and then reimagined in the isolation of lockdown, “come” is perhaps the album’s most emotionally exposed track. It feels like the breath right before a confession. Lenker’s voice carries a trembling vulnerability, each line teetering between strength and fragility. The song feels alive, pulsing with the fear and relief of saying something that has been held inside too long.

8. “zombie girl”

A ghost story told through emotional memory rather than supernatural fear, “zombie girl” explores emptiness and absence. Lenker sings into the quiet as though asking the dark to answer back. The refrain lingers, haunting in its simplicity. It’s a study of the shadows left behind after someone is gone.

9. “not a lot, just forever”

Soft and steady, this song captures the quiet rituals of love, the small gestures that hold people together even as they drift. The melody rocks gently, like someone trying to soothe themselves through a moment of uncertainty. It’s a portrait of longing without melodrama, restraint without coldness.

10. “dragon eyes”

“dragon eyes” leans deeply into metaphor and transformation. There’s movement and curiosity in every line as Lenker tries to understand a relationship or identity shifting beneath her. The natural imagery reflects the environment she recorded: wood, sky, breath, and instinct, grounding the emotional exploration in the physical world.

11. “my angel”

The closing track feels like sunrise breaking through a long night. After wandering through loss, memory, and vulnerability, “my angel” settles into a space of fragile hope. It’s not triumphant, but it is steady, a quiet recognition that survival itself can be a form of grace. Lenker’s final notes land gently, leaving the listener suspended in a soft, lingering light.

Five years after its release, songs remains one of the most quietly radical albums of the decade. In an era dominated by heavy production and algorithm-driven trends, Lenker’s work feels almost defiantly human. In the years since, many records have been louder, bolder, or more ambitious, but few have matched its emotional honesty. songs endures because the artist understands something essential: that there is profound beauty in softness. 

In a world full of noise, songs does not shout. It whispers. And that whisper, steady, honest, and deeply human, is why Adrianne Lenker’s masterpiece still holds up.