Adrienne Lenker has a new album in her hands. The Big Thief vocalist, author of one of the best albums of 2022, is simultaneously developing a solo career, and since 2014 she has released a handful of albums, her most recent being ‘songs’ (2020).
Lenker gives few details about his new album. We know that it will be released in 2024 and that Philip Weinrobe has been in charge of producing it. This same week the first single was released.
‘Ruined’ is the first preview of Adrienne Lenker’s next feature. It is a piano ballad that we can consider one of the most classic that Lenker has ever composed: classic in the commercial sense, of course. With little more than her voice and a piano arrangement, Lenker emotionally devotes herself to a melody that would not have been out of place in Carole King’s repertoire.
‘Ruined’ contains “the essence of the gift of romantic love,” in the words of Adrienne, who we hear hopelessly in love, certainly to the point of obsession or self-“ruining.” The memory of a greeting that she does not dare to perform, the crying of that person while she offers him a gift, are some of the scenes that Adrienne describes in this heartfelt composition.
The chorus of ‘Ruined’ is affirmative: “you come, and I am left in ruins.” Adrienne repeats this phrase as if it were a mantra. However, Lenker notes that ‘Ruined’ is about “something bigger” than romantic love. Maybe it refers to something more spiritual. ‘Ruined’ hits deep, that’s for sure.
