Adrianne Lenker has been busy. For the past four years she has been touring, first as a solo act with her fantastic record Songs, and then as part of her band Big Thief following 2022’s Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You. And now, just as you’d expect her to spend a few well deserved years in some remote cabin, experimenting with bizarre open guitar tunings, she’s gearing up to release another solo effort in March: Bright Future. Preceding this new record have been, ironically, a handful of deeply bleak singles: “Ruined” and “Sadness as a Gift”.

While Lenker and Big Thief have always explored the space between indie rock and folk, at least one of these tracks take a radical departure into country territory. “Sadness as a Gift”’s features a gorgeous fiddle line, a little reminiscent of Alex G’s last few polyphonic records (House of Sugar, God Save the Animals), but here more nuanced and subtle, laid among a bed of shiny acoustic guitars and a twangy, plucky slide. Lyrically, Lenker is trodding familiar heartbreak territory, here, and cliches abound, but the interplay between her vocal melody and the slide guitar makes me forgive any literary triteness.

 “Ruined” is a more traditional minor-key ballad. The majority of its runtime is pleasant, highly concerned with atmosphere, if a little dull, but in the final quarter a raucous, bluesy piano comes in and buoys the song into greatness. I find myself unable to identify what production tricks have been applied, here, but they’ve emphasized the dissonance of the piano in way that’s utterly gripping, and I find myself relistening to “Ruined” just to hear its tritone clash.

Lenker’s first solo record gave us some of the most gorgeous singer-songwriter work of all time; “Ingydar”, “Anything”, and “Not a Lot, Just Forever” bring tears to my eyes even after dozens of listens. Judging by her recent singles, we should be expecting another album of Songs’ caliber come March 22.