Top 5 Big Thief (or Adrianne Lenker) songs

 When summer rolls around, there’s nothing better than being in nature with your friends and listening to some music. Although music taste varies, my friends and I enjoy listening to American indie rock band, Big Thief and the lead singer’s (Adrianne Lenker) solo projects. Here’s some songs that emulate the new season and emphasize the love of nature, and its surrounding elements.

1. Simulation Swarm (Big Thief)

Simulation Swarm gets the first pick of Big Thief’s discography because it’s soft guitar accompanied by the smooth bass that plays an uptempo beat creates the image of a sitting beside a large tree, but not quite underneath so you can still feel the sun hitting your skin with its warm rays of shine. This song focuses on what it feels when you’re eating a bowl of fruit and sharing with your friends, laughing when it gets messy and stains your fingers with the cherry-red sweetness. The lyrics are descriptive, which is very common for Adrianne Lenker’s writing style, which tells a multitude of stories, ranging from witnessing horses gallop freely about to admiring the soft skin of a newborn baby. All these descriptions lead up to the chorus, which reveals that this is a love song. “You believe, I believe too, that you are the river of light who I love,” is a phrase in the song that’s one of my personal favorites. The subject is love is strong and a common theme in Big Thief’s music. 

2. Certainty (Big Thief)

Certainty is from the album Dragon In The New Warm Mountain, I Believe In You, which is the most recent Big Thief release. This song deserves its spot on this list because it’s the perfect summer road trip song. I recently had this track on repeat once the sun started to come out more. The song reminds me what it feels like to trust someone fully and to accept that they will accept you as you are, if you accept them. The lyrics are more simple in comparison to some of the other works done by Big Thief but the description of love is still there. It’s catchy and fun drums make it the perfect song to sing along to with your friends or to have it play in the background as you drive under the clear sky with the fresh air hitting your skin, accompanied by the sun’s warm breath. 

3. ingydar (Adrianne Lenker)

This song is from Adrianne Lenker’s solo project, titled “songs,” and describes the aspect of growing and accepting that as you continue to grow into the person you always hoped to become, you also continue to slowly decay. It’s a bit morbid to think about, but it’s the truth that we should face. In a way, it’s an admiration for aging and loving that you only have this life experience once and loving it as you move forward is just as important as living it. I feel that the current generation is very fixated on staying young and not wishing to see those smile likes or the crinkles by your eyes from smiling too much, but I find it so beautiful to know that those lines that our society has grown to hate shows that you have experienced so much that a million of poets could write about you if you had given them the chance. “Everything eats and is eaten,” is a fact and whether you think of it as sad or beautiful is completely up to your own interpretation, but I view it as more of a comforting fact that we, and all the organisms on this planet, share the same fate and are all together in loving what we can. 

4. forwards beckon rebound (Adrianne Lenker)

This is another track from the album “songs” by Adrianne Lenker that has the same folksy and gentle sound as the previous track. This song is about accepting the inner self - both the good and the ugly. To view oneself or others as a singular verb is a terrible habit we have all come to. I think it’s important to realize that people are not all bad, and they are not all good - and neither yourself. Whether you think of yourself as a good or bad person, someone will always think the opposite of it. However, to live yourself accordingly and freely is not care what other people define you as. To live your life is not acknowledge that you are a human, and accepting that everyone around you is also human and going through life for the first time too is important to accepting the mistakes you’ve made, or others have made. “Villain and violent, infant and innocent, baby, both arms cradle you now,” empathizes this idea that whether you believe yourself to be good or evil, depending on your actions, there will always be someone who loves you. That, however, will take time to find another person who views you as such. The easiest ways to approach this it to be your own arms to accept yourself as you are. You know yourself best - you should accept yourself with all your little details in your face, laugh and posture. 

5. not a lot, just forever (Adrianne Lenker)

This song is my best friend’s favorite song from Lenker. This is another love song written by Adrianne Lenker, its gentle, soft and kind and exhibits a sense of comfort. The meaning of this song is pretty straight-forward. It’s about loving someone and wishing to have forever with them, but the artist shys away from being so broad so she feels the need to say “not a lot,” as a sense of comfort for herself. She hopes that by saying this that she won’t scare away the other person, which is something I find a lot of people tend to do in relationships, especially as one begins or as one ends. Secretly hoping the other person feels the same as you is something I find so sweet in love because it’s anxious, nail biting aspect shows how much you care.

5 Songs You Should Listen to

 I find that people listen to music differently. We all have different tastes and perspectives on art that is meant for viewing and listening. The impact a song has on an individual is something you cannot take away from another. Here’s 5 songs that I think everyone should listen to at least once.

1. New Partner by Palace Music

This song by Palace Music explores the emotions someone may feel after a breakup and the guilt of moving on. Now, the reasoning for a breakup can result out of anything, but when the breakup wasn’t dramatic and didn’t end in a terrible way that is constantly shown in the media, it’s hard to move on without feeling like you’ve committed a sin. This song repeatedly says “you are always on my mind,” before the artist ends the chorus with “but hello, I’ve got a new partner riding with me.” It’s important to move on after a relationship ends and it seems that everyone hates their previous partner when it initially breaks off, but the real sign that you’ve really moved on is the ability to look back at that relationship and think to yourself that you liked that person for a reason. Appreciation for the good times is always the key to acceptance. 

2. Second Chances by Gregory Alan Isakov

This song is one of my favorites from Gregory Alan Isakov. In this artist’s music, he often discusses the concept of “home.” By regular definition, a home is a place in which you live, but in Isakov’s music, you can interpret “home” as more than a place, but a feeling. This song is about hope, and the search for peace and happiness. The main chorus line is “if it weren’t for second chances, we’d all be alone.” This line breathes hope. There are many times where we feel that we screwed up big time, whether that be with an important aspect in regards to career or family, or a person you’ve fallen in love with. These mistakes we make do not define us for what we are and what we’re capable of, instead it allows us to grow and accept that things won’t always go our way. But the main takeaway from this song is that when you get the chance to do it again, to fall in love or to go back to a place you thought you never would be able to go back to, you take it. It’s simplistically human to yearn for a future with a fixed mistake, and this song emphasizes that emotion.

3. The Biggest Lie by Elliott Smith

This song by Elliott Smith is about drug addiction and having to witness someone you care about lose themselves to this disease. Smith’s lyrics play as dialogue to the person this song is about. The line “everything you do makes me want to die, oh, I just told the biggest lie,” acts as internal and external dialogue. If you’ve ever experienced being around a person who has been lost to drug addiction, it’s not uncommon to have hateful emotions towards the person they’ve become. It’s difficult if you’ve spoken up on these negative feelings about their new character knowing that you still miss and love the person they once were. This song embodies that awkward feeling where you feel stuck in the middle of loving and hating a person. The biggest “lie” that Elliott Smith tells is that he hates everything that person does, but he doesn’t. He still views this person as “precious” even after everything they’ve done. 

4. anything by Adrianne Lenker

Another breakup song, but this song is more about yearning for the past. My friends and I sat and listened to this song back-to-back trying to understand how this could be a breakup song when we all thought this was a love song. It’s very easy to misinterpret this song because initially when you listen, you see the lines “I don’t want to talk about anything, I want to kiss your eyes again. I want to witness your eyes looking,” you think that this person is so in love that all they want to do is kiss and observe their person. But, as you delve deeper into the song's lyrics, you begin to understand that the musician doesn’t want to talk about anything because they struggle with communicating their emotions. This song is not some grand metaphor for being in love, but for not being able to accept the responsibilities of love. Lenker views love as kind and hopeful, wishing to get their partner back and uses this song to explain her lack of healthy communication as she pleads “I was scared, Indigo, but I wanted to.” Love is kind and sweet, to the point where just witnessing a person blink is beautiful. To be in love, is to be gentle and to be gentle, you have to communicate.

5. In My Arms by Alex G

This song’s meaning is something I’ve played around with a lot. I used to think it was a love song and having to hold a person you’re in love with as they grieve their previous relationship. I viewed it as “I know you still love someone else, but I love you.” It’s beautiful in that way and you can still view it in that manner, but I think this song has a more simple meaning than that. In My Arms by Alex G is about accepting the simple things in life. This song doesn’t appear to have one distinct story, like the other songs I’ve mentioned do. Alex G seems to have taken different moments and conversations in his life to create a song that welcomes newness and loves the past. The first section is about having a simple conversation with a person and realizing that regardless of the topic, the conversation always seems to flow naturally. It’s about finding a person who seems to complete you, and I mean this in a platonic way. Many of the people I am closest to are my friends because I never worry that I’ll run out of things to say - there’s just always something, and even when there isn’t, their company is more than enough to keep me happy. The second section is about him comforting a friend who lost their wife, whether it be through death or a natural breakup, but Alex G admires that his friend was able to confide in him. The last section says “you said this song makes you want to do bad things, you know good music makes me want to do bad things.” This part of the song always confused me, because I feel that these “bad” things can mean a multitude of things. It’s possible that this third section is an extension to the previous, where the man has lost his wife. This could mean that the man had a history of drug addiction, which is a common theme in Alex G’s music, and Alex G comforts him with a simple “me too.” This song is beautiful on its own and regardless of how confusing the intent behind the lyrics can be, its soft guitar strums alongside the drums that perfectly compliments the song creates a feeling of acknowledgement for the good and the ugly that I’ve never felt from a song before.