Matt Mitchell wrote on Paste in 2024:
As soon as I finished listening to Real House, the opening track from Adrianne Lenker's new album Bright Future, for the first time, I paused the music and immediately called my mother—not to say “I love you” but to hear her voice and remember the gift of connection we hold together even in distance.
The song, easily Lenker's rawest and intimate yet, rebels against mystery, refusing to be enshrouded by opaqueness. It’s a plainspoken, minimal and articulated collection of reflective vignettes – an archival of 22 years of Lenker's life as she remembers them. She conjures images of braiding willow branches into a crown, trying to build a portal to another world, dreams of flying, a mother and daughter's shared laughter in a hospital, a family coming together to say goodbye to their aging dog.
Lenker's only muse on Real House is the past, and there are no cryptic metaphors. It's, as she calls it, "an autobiographical, condensed montage of the most pivotal moments in my childhood up until the moment of my dog’s death."
Lenker is also the lead vocalist, guitarist and principal songwriter of the band Big Thief.
If you're in the mood for songs about children's dogs dying, I chose Shannon by Henry Grose on a Sunday long ago.
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