Song Exploder - Adrianne Lenker - Sadness As a Gift

Episode Date: January 8, 2025

Adrianne Lenker is a singer and songwriter. She’s the lead singer of the critically acclaimed and beloved band Big Thief, and her work as a solo artist is also critically acclaimed and beloved. Her most recent solo album, Bright Future, was named one of the best albums of 2024 by the New Yorker, Stereogum, and more, and it was nominated for a Grammy for Best Folk Album. It was co-produced by Adrianne and longtime collaborator Phil Weinrobe. And I talked to the two of them about the making of one of my favorite songs from it, “Sadness As a Gift.”For more, visit songexploder.net/adrianne-lenker.

You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs, and piece by piece tell the story of how they were made. I'm Rishi Kesh Hirwe. Adrienne Lanker is a singer and songwriter. She's the lead singer of the critically acclaimed and beloved band Big Thief, and her work as a solo artist is also critically acclaimed and beloved. Her most recent solo album, Bright Future, was named one of the best albums of 2024 by The New Yorker, Stereo Gum, and More. and was nominated for a Grammy for Best Folk album. It was co-produced by Adrienne and longtime collaborator Philip Weinrope, and I talked to the two of them about the making of one of my favorite songs from it,

Sadness is a Gift. You and I have nothing more to say. Chances shut her shining eyes and turned her face away. leaning on the window sill you could write me someday and I think you will we could see the sadness as a gift and still feel too heavy to hold

Could you tell me when sadness is a gift first started coming to you? How the idea for the song first entered your mind? Well, I had gone through a breakup and my heart was aching a lot. I had this therapist for a little while, and he was actually the one who first planted the idea in my mind that that sadness you feel is actually just an indication of your love. You wouldn't feel that sadness or that longing without having this great love inside of you.

And that sadness is an indicator of how strongly you feel and felt. So it kind of flipped my way of thinking about sadness. and years later, when I was going through this heartbreak, I was feeling that like, yes, this is a loss, but therein lies the gift of feeling how powerfully I love. But it didn't cancel out the fact that it can still feel unbearable. So it's holding both worlds. It's like acknowledging the longing and all of that sadness,

not trying to push it away. Well, I have this recording that I believe is the original demo that you made. Wow, I had definitely been crying in that one. That was a voice memo right from when I wrote it, so I can hear in my voice was pretty raw, and yeah. Searching for your eyes, all I see are blue skies. Looking at blue skies is like a very joyful feeling, but it's like I don't even want to see the blue sky. I just want to see your eyes. That's all I'm looking for and all I can see is this big blue sky. And the old man beats his crooked cane, says it's time to let go. It's like

these figures you encounter. Like maybe they don't even understand their own magic, but they give you these little keys to your existence. Maybe it's a tree, you know? Maybe the tree is the old man. The crooked cane is just the limb of the tree and it's beating in the wind and the leaves are are falling off the branch and it's shaking off the last of its dead leaves reminding you. It's time to let go. Everything, we must let go of everything. And it's a gift to feel that sadness because it means you're feeling and it means you're alive and that you're able to love.

I was deep in the feeling of what I was going through and I can really hear that in my voice when I hear that recording. Sometimes when I'm really deep. deep in a feeling it's too much to write like I can't write in those exact moments and those very things feel so out of reach and feel so hard just pick up the notebook or like pick up the guitar get it out of the case you know but it's like no I think I'm just going to like eat this bag of chips and face plant but like not that there's anything wrong with that like sometimes that's what you got to do you know but sometimes I'll like see a flash of myself picking up

guitar and I'm still laying there you know okay well I don't think I'm going to write anything right now and I don't feel too good but like maybe I'll just play it for a couple seconds and I can always put it down and it's like pick it up and it's like oh my god this is what I needed you know sometimes nothing happens but sometimes a whole thing happens Adrienne I know you met Phil originally through big thief how did you end up deciding to work with him on your solo albums when I first met him, I thought he was too good to be true. In what way? Like, I kind of felt like he was so generous in his presence and with his spirit and just watching

how he lives life and how he does his work. It was always just so engaged and so loving. And I just came to develop a very deep trust for him. I'm Philip Weinrobe, and I engineered, mixed, and produced. this song alongside Adrian. Phil, do you remember the first time you heard this song in any kind of form? Yeah, Adrian texted it to me. You know, Adrian texts me a good amount of songs, and I love all of them equally and some

of them more equally. And this was one that I loved more equally right away from the iPhone recording. It just felt like a song that had existed for like thousands of years, and also like I've never heard it before, which is such a wonderful experience to have one listening to a song. And this was probably a good year before we went into record. So it had been kicking around for a while. And it had almost taken on its own lore in the small community of people who hear some of Adrian's songs in their early stages. Like I remember speaking with a few different people in the big thief camp.

And it was like, man, have you heard sadness as a gift? it's like, yeah, yeah, I heard it. Whoa, I can't stop listening to it. So I kind of thought like, oh, we're going in to make the record that's going to have sadness as a gift on it. And where did you go to record the album? It took place in the little studio in the Northeast called Dublin Infinity. What made you decide that was where you wanted to do it?

We wanted to be in a place we could really feel kind of at home in and had the feeling of, even though we recorded a record there, this place doesn't feel like a recording studio, just a room you can make music in. And with like water nearby in forest and feeling the wind blowing through kind of not really heavily insulated and soundproofed like a lot of studios are. I was wanting to feel what it would be like

to be responding in real time to other people playing parlor instruments, just acoustic instruments, piano, guitars, and violin. There's something incredibly exciting to me about the alchemy and the power that can be produced and created with just these raw instruments together in a room without the need for headphones. It feels immense and deep and rich and powerful, but even just in its softness. And who else was there with the two of you? Josephine Runstein, Nick Hakeem, and Matt Davidson. A really magical part of this whole thing was that the first people I thought of

and the first people I asked were actually all miraculously available. Yeah. I was like, hmm, who could play piano? Oh, Nick, I would love to play with Nick. And then who could play fiddle or violin? Well, Matt plays fiddle. And Josephine, I love how she plays violin. And we had never all played together.

so there was some risk involved. We didn't really know how it was going to alchemize, but I love all of them. Can you tell me more about this idea of not using headphones? Because that feels pretty unusual. Well, Phil and I first were just the two of us for like a week, and then everyone showed up. But we didn't use headphones.

I was just sitting in the room with my acoustic guitar. And then once everyone else showed up, it just kind of carried over. And even further than not wearing headphones was we didn't even listen back to a single thing that we did at all. Like everyone left and hadn't heard a single recording we had made. And no one even asked. What do you think is the advantage of not listening back to stuff you're recording?

Because that feels like such a huge part of the recording process normally. You know, okay, let's do a take. Let's listen back. How does that sound? Oh, let me adjust this thing and then fix it for the next take. what is the benefit of not working that way? Trusting yourself. Yeah, trusting your feelings.

It's almost like getting ready to go out the door without looking in a mirror. There is an inclination or a strong pull to check yourself all the time to check like, what do we sound like? Does this sound good? Do we need to change or alter anything? Do we need to move this piece of hair like to the right of that eyebrow? But I feel like actually working in a way where you just go based off of how it feels to play in the room. And, oh, I know that take two was good because I felt so much when we were playing at that time.

And like, I know that the take after that was good because I got chills during that one. And I cried on take four. So, man, like, I know we got it in there. We got it in there somewhere. I don't even have to hear back because I know I enjoyed that moment. playing music in the room. And I got to trust that that as real a gauge

as any gauge could be. The problem with playback is that you must be a critic during playback. You must analyze. You can't really just listen to playback and enjoy it. And as soon as you flip roles

and become an analyzer and a critic, you've now lost whatever performer position you're in. And to me, that's the real tragedy. of playback is that we do all this work to like get into a zone to perform and then playback just kind of like knocks you off that very very tender and beautiful little balancing position that you've gotten and in a group it's even more difficult and so I just want to protect the ability to perform music at all costs and to me playback is dangerous because of that so I wanted to ask you that

Just to preface what we're going to be listening to because no headphones means you're all just playing in one room and listening to each other in real time. So everybody's playing is in everyone else's mic. And normally on the show, I can isolate the different instruments. But that's not possible with this live recording setup that you did. But one cool thing that I do have is all the different takes that you recorded. Cool. I didn't know you had this stuff. That's awesome. Yeah, Phil sent me all eight different takes of the song recorded on two different days. So let's listen to this part from the very first take. Cool. Thinking like this one was going to last. Maybe the question was too much to last. It's cool hearing the double fiddle.

I noticed that the lyrics are a little bit different here. In the demo, you had sung The Seasons Go Fast, thinking that this love was going to last. And now you've changed it to The Seasons Go So Fast, thinking that this one was going to last. I know it's a little change, but I was wondering if you could tell me about making that change. I thought it was stronger,

because the seasons go fast, thinking this love was going to last, kind of puts the season and the love in different categories, whereas it's really like, thinking that this season was going to last, which is the love. So it's kind of redundant. Yeah, I love that double meaning in the song. Phil, do you remember what you were thinking when you heard this for the first time with the full ensemble? So the first run on sadness as a gift was before Nick Hakeem arrived to the studio. So this is Adrian, Matt Davidson, and Josephine Rundstein.

Right. And so that's why we didn't hear piano in that take. Yeah. Actually, I remember thinking that I was excited, but as it was happening, I could hear the energy from the violins came in late or was a little hesitant. And I remember feeling in this first take like, oh, they're going to get a little warmed up after this one, and we're going to start really digging in, I bet. I mean, it's already so different. Yeah, that's, that is the energy. You can feel it. It's like the other one, it's like you're kind of skirting around the edges of the song. And this one is like you're in the song. There's nothing more to say. Chances, shutter, shining eyes, and turned her face away.

Leaning on the window sill. You could write me someday and I think you will. We could see the sadness as a gift and still feel too heavy to hold. There must have been something like unsettled or not fully satisfied in me that was like, I don't know if we have it yet, even though the energy is really there. But there must have been something in the delivery that didn't convey the fullness of the story. Because I don't know why else we would have done it again. I think it was like, let's give it a shot before Nick comes. We did a bunch of takes, see how it goes.

And then let's like do it again after Nick gets here. but we were always going to try it again once Nick showed up. And you'll hear how that turned out when my conversation with Adrienne Lanker and Philip Wine Roeb continues after this. I have a new album of my own coming out on April 24th. It's been about 15 years since I last put out a full length. And this is the first one that'll be out under my own name, Rishikesh Her Way. I started making Song Exploder when I was feeling lost in my own music career. And then for over a decade, I've gotten to have these incredible conversations about the

process of making music, talking to other artists, and it made me completely rethink my relationship to music and my way of writing songs. And this album is the product of all of that. It features contributions from some of my favorite artists, including some folks that you may have heard on this podcast, like Iron and Wine, Kevin Morby, Vagabon, Fenlily, and the producer Phil Winerobe. I'm going to be on tour playing in cities across the U.S. starting in April, and I'm trying to bring the spirit of the podcast with me. So every show that I'm playing will be begin with a conversation about the album with a different amazing guest moderator in each city, like Adam Scott, Samin Nasrat, Jason Manzuchas, Josh Molina, Minjin Lee, Ken Jennings, John Roderick,

Austin Cleon, and more. They're all going to be my conversation partners on stage, and then I'll play with my band. The album is called In the Last Hour of Light, and the first couple songs are out now. You can listen to the music and get tickets for the shows on my website, rishikash.co, or just go to songexploder.net slash live. That's songexploder.net slash live. Thanks. So I'd love to listen to the take that actually made it onto the album. And in this one, Nick Hakeem is now playing piano

and Matt Davidson has moved from fiddle to electric guitar. Yeah. That is 100% not planned, just to be clear. Like, Adrienne just like heard Matt playing and started playing. We didn't say, why doesn't this start with an electric guitar? Run down. Yeah, no, we didn't. And in fact, you can tell it's unplanned because Adrian's counting.

I think you're kind of saying, actually, let's just do a take. That's what that means. Right, because you don't do that count in on other takes. Two, one, two, three, four. Adrian, did you ever think about doing everything live except the vocals, keeping this kind of parlor feel, but then coming back and being like, well, and then I'll overdub my vocals on top of this performance so that I can do as many takes or change my mind about things later. I just don't love doing it like that because I feel like I have the most fun singing when I'm singing with everything that's happening in real time.

It does feel risky sometimes because I'm like, well, what if I don't like that? But then it also helps me let go because if I'm having fun, it's probably a good vocal. take, even if it's not perfect. And I could get a perfect vocal take, but it won't have all that energy of when I was having fun with everyone. Which one would you rather hear? Someone singing who's having fun or someone singing who's thinking about getting a perfect vocal take. When I was a kid, I recorded a lot. You know, I didn't go to high school. Instead, I was just in the studio. And I would sit at 13 years old in the studio for hours and hours and hours, comping together, line by line, word by word.

For your vocal takes. Yeah, that's what I was told was the way to make something good, that you have to get it perfect. And I didn't really like how the records came out. It sucked the joy out of it for me. And when I listen to recordings, I love, there's a spark of life and energy in it that, like, I started practicing and studying in a way how to find that. I do really love the way it feels to play music in a room and let all of the things in. You and I could see into the same eternity. I really like singing that part.

That lyric? Yeah, because it's another question, like, what does it look like to see into eternity and the same eternity as someone else, implying that there are different eternities that individuals could see into? And that somehow you and I have lined up and we're looking like into this little like window of the same, same eternity. And you could hear the music inside my mind and you showed me a place I'll find even when I'm old. Oh, kids so sweet, so fine. You could hear the music inside my mind And you show me a place I'll find Even when I'm old

It's like maybe when we all line up on a song And we're singing it together or feeling it together With all of our different ways of perceiving And all of our different life stories and journeys When we all sing a song together in a present moment We're actually glimpsing eternity together. Maybe the question was too much to add.

And now here's Sadness as a Gift by Adrienne Lanker in its entirety. You could write me someday and I think you will. We could see the sadness as a gift and still feel too heavy to hold snow falling. I try to keep you. The spring turned to winter fire fly Go so fast thinking that this one was gonna last Maybe the question was too much to ask Searching for your eyes

All I see is blue sky You could write me someday and I bet you will We could see the sadness as a gift and still the seasons go so fast thinking that this one was gonna last maybe the question was too much to ask I could see into the same eternity second priming with a majesty kiss so sweet so fine you could hear the music in inside my mind and you show me a place all fine. Just leaning on a window sill, you could write me someday and I hope you will.

We could see the sadness as a gift and still. So fast, thinking that this one is going to add. Visit SongExploder.net to learn more about Adrienne Lanker and to find links to buy or stream this song. This episode was produced by me, along with Craig Ely, Kathleen Smith, and Mary Dolan, and production assistant, Tiger Biscope. The episode artwork is by Carlos Lerma, and I made the show's theme music and logo. Special thanks to Noah Lanker and Phil Weinrog for their help with this episode. Song Exploder is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX,

a network of independent, listener-supported, artist-owned podcasts. You can learn more about our shows at Radiotopia.fm. If you'd like to hear more from me, you can sign up from my. my newsletter. You can find a link to it on the Song Exploder website. You can also follow me on Instagram at Rishi Hereway, and you can get a Song Exploder t-shirt at songexploder.net slash shirt. I'm Rishi Kesh Hereway. Thanks for listening.