Abysskiss – Adrianne Lenker

Terminal Paradise

From

Womb

Out of your mind

Cradle

Symbol

Blue and red horses

Abyss kiss

What can you say

10 miles

When I first encountered this album, it did not blow me away. It was nice, and listenable, but it did not send shivers down my spine. But I do vividly remember going to see her live during the Abysskiss tour. I knew Big Thief at the time, and had of course listened to this album, but I hadn’t been drawn into her world, her music hadn’t permeated deep inside if me. As I watched her on stage, all alone, I began to feel something that I hadn’t felt before. She was one of those artists who stood awkwardly behind the microphone, her nervousness palpable, her vulnerability hanging in the air. And then she began to sing, and the vulnerability, as so often is the case, blossomed into great strength. It was for me what I can only describe as a spiritual experience, where I felt entirely connected, transported into the very presence of being. She played a number of songs from the album, some older ones, and some songs in their early stages that would later become Big Thief songs. It was an evening that shifted my whole view of Adrienne Lenker as a song writer.

She can be described as nothing but prolific, churning out quality album after quality album. As I write this, their single ‘Change’ has been on repeat for the last few weeks. Her lyrics on this album in particular are haunting. The focus on death is unnerving, but not morbid. It is realistic, it embraces humanity in all its muck and depravity, and dares the listener to live it. ‘Dripping your tears/Like a precious warm spring’, there is power in weakness, in vulnerability, in fragility. Of ‘Symbol’ she said: “Writing it helped me articulate the recognition of a very deep sense of home contained within the warmth of my loved ones and friends made visible in something as simple as a smile.” But the stand out track for me, at least at the time of writing, is Terminal Paradise. This took on new meaning for me as I drove to see my grandma for the last time, as she had been placed on palliative care. Once again, the vulnerability of the human condition stands out: ‘Terminal/we both know’. But the images of transformation, of blossoming once more, are ones to hold on to. They are not comforting necessarily; they do not take away from the pain that is felt, but that isn’t the point. The album asks us to look at one another, to hold one another in our mutual suffering, and perhaps to dare to be vulnerable together.

Abysskiss is not an album that I listen to often, but it is one that has a very special place in my collection, one that when the mood is right, will transport me into the vastness that Lenker seems to intent in getting lost in.