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Adrianne Lenker Steps Into the Abyss

"I get scared of songs disappearing. It's good to record them because I don't have to carry them around anymore," Lenker says.
"I get scared of the songs disappearing," says Adrianne Lenker, lead singer of the band Big Thief.
Adrianne Lenker

As leader of the indie-rock band Big Thief, Adrianne Lenker has developed a reputation for songwriting that channels big, unwieldy emotions—trauma, grief, desire—into intimate storytelling.

With a haunting new solo album, titled , Lenker is narrowing the arrangements but not the ambition. "[The album] is about very basic things—observing life,” Lenker says, casually. “And birth. And decay. And heartache.

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