A​-​Sides (studio album) by Adrianne Lenker & Buck Meek

From Mercury 02/11/2022 18:15

From the first seconds of the opening track “Jonathan”, I felt like I was in folk heaven. There is a warmth, a tender and sincere love, a beautiful sense of joy and collaboration on this little 21 minute EP. This has been on repeat for hours, and it is still so sweet and has lost none of its luster after half a dozen spins. The only thing, truly, keeping this from a 10/10 project is the relative dip in subjective enjoyment on the final couple (still quite nice) tracks, “Yuki Onna” and “I Still Hear You”. But, I am being honest when I tell you that tracks 1 through 5 absolutely floor me. The fact that this is just a little EP thrown together as a result of the connection between Lenker and Meek just before they got married and just before they formed Big Thief is stunning. There is an unfinished and off-the-cuff, creation-for-creation’s-sake atmosphere here. And you can almost here the smiles and winks that are being exchanged as these two musicians hit that sweet harmony or watch each other pull off some cool acoustic folk guitar lick. Its wonderous.

The opener is a short, 2 minute, folk gem, and instantly I can hear personally that Lenker genius developing in record time. Her voice is getting into its unique, wholly-her-own sound, and the songwriting is so crisp and tender and to-the-point. The harmonies on this track are amazing. A great example of 2 not great singers (one is very good and one is sort of a folk, Dylan-y intentional unclean thing) combining to create a perfect jigsaw mix.

The track “Money” is great and all, but on the final verse there is a musical shift and the whole giddy, loving happiness comes tumbling out and this last verse just pushes this already great tune to new heights. Then ”Kerina” another great folk jam, perhaps not as personally memorable as the first 2, but still excellent and even the “lesser” tracks here are imbued with that love and that humane, brittle beauty.

“Miss Misty” is the first of 2 tracks of these 7 that feature Buck Meek on lead vocal with Lenker peppering in some sweet sweeeeet harmonies. This song is perhaps my favorite of the EP. There is a moody, cool, contemplative, soul-deep beauty on display with this track and Buick absolutely kills it on lead vocals. I don’t remember many or any Buck lead vocals in Big Thief. This makes me sad if this is never returned to. Because, although Lenker is the main star and the best of the best, it helps to spice it up a bit especially when the songs and performances are as perfect as this.

Then track 5 is a track which is on Lenker’s debut, called “Indiana” and something about the more hushed and personal performance here and something about how the harmonies work and the duel guitars, all these factors make me adore this version considerably more than the one on Hours Is The Birds. Its good there, its great here.

And as already mentioned this album ends with 2 more low key and slower and still quite gorgeous and tender tracks. Especially love the pure romance and love on display on the closing track “I Still Hear You” and now that I listen to it now, I take back what I said about this being a relative lesser track here. Its actually quite stunning and super subtle and a beautiful way to end this EP.

Overall, this is great! These 2 should start a band! Lol. But I will say this style, this direct and unadulterated Folk is quite nice and very very different in many ways from the debut Big Thief album released just over a year later. I love the folk ROCK sound of Big Thief. But this EP is quickly becoming one of my fave EPs and I hope that, as I listen to further Meek/Lenker and Big Thief records, there are at least glimpses back at this sound.

Overall, again not a 10, also I give it a little bit of a de-boost in rating due to it being an EP, so my rating for this first half, this A Sides of this pre-Big Thief Lenker/Meek collab is…drum roll… 9.1/10 – in other words this is marvelous.