Pre-order for “A-Sides and Besides” , Hours Were the Birds and Abysskiss. All are being reissued on black vinyl via 4AD.

Abysskiss: Adrianne Lenker has been writing songs since she was 10 years old. Despite, or more likely because of the constant touring and studio work, the last few years have been some of the most prolific for Lenker as a writer. Songs pop out at soundcheck. They pop out on late night drives between cities. They pop out in green rooms, hotel stairwells, gardens, and kitchens around the world. In the hands of Lenker songwriting is not an old dead craft. It is alive. It is vital. With little regard for standard album cycle practice or the idea of resting at all, Lenker set out to make a document. Songs can be slippery and following years on the road with Big Thief, Lenker felt a growing need to document this particular time in her life in an intimate, immediate way.
"I want to archive the songs in their original forms every few years," explains Lenker. "My first solo record I made was Hours Were the Birds. I had just turned 21 and moved to New York City where I was sleeping in a warehouse, working in a restaurant and photographing pigeons. Now five years later, another skin is being shed."
Following a two week road trip through the southwestern United States, Lenker headed into the studio with longtime friend Luke Temple. The songs chosen for this collection were the songs that felt the most alive in the room. The thread that connects these songs is not something that can easily be put down in words. Intuition connects these songs. They are a record of a time.
Here we have a songwriter of the highest order, following her voice and the greater Voices that pass through her with an unflinching openness and clarity of translation.

A-Sides and Besides: The summer after graduating from Berklee College of Music, Adrianne Lenker moved to New York City. She met Buck Meek the day she moved there, at a corner market called Mr. Kiwi (although, technically they had already played a show together in Boston, so they recognized each other but weren't sure from where). The two explored the city by bicycle and eventually began to play songs together. "It was one of those friendships that developed extremely fast where suddenly you're each other's best friend," Lenker says. "We hung out every day from the moment we met."
Meek's off-kilter, piercing guitar licks and solos are the perfect juxtaposition to bring Lenker's melodic and stirring vocals and lyrics to fruition. "I guess what struck me as a songwriter then was that her songs all seemed to be really human, and really emotional, and really honest — vulnerable — but at the same time they all somehow had this ineffable quality," Meek says. "Like, all of that human content was serving as a medium for something beyond."
Soon they picked up a white conversion van, named her Bonnie, and made touring their whole lives. In 2014, songs crafted on the road were captured on two EPs released under the Buck and Anne moniker: one called a-sides and one called b-sides. Both warm, acoustic affairs.
In the ensuing years, Adrianne and Buck joined with Max Oleartchik and James Krivchenia to form Big Thief, one of the most beloved bands in music today. a-sides and b-sides provide an early glimpse at what was soon to come, while standing on their own as documents of a deeply meaningful time in the creative lives of Lenker and Meek.

Hours Were the Birds: With the release of breakthrough albums Masterpiece and Capacity, Big Thief’s Adrianne Lenker has established herself as one of the most powerful voices in music. As Consequence of Sound describes it, "Thanks to the swift ascent of Big Thief, singer-songwriter Adrianne Lenker has become one of the most praised indie folk artists of the last five years.”while her output with Big Thief is what brought her music to the attention of most who hold her in such high regard, Masterpiece is not the beginning of the story. "My first solo record I made was Hours Were the Birds,” Lenker explains. “I moved to New York and, starting from complete scratch, had nothing to show anybody that was representing what I did, other than stuff I made when I was 13. So, I decided I should record a solo album of my songs that I had been accumulating.”
In 2013 Lenker returned to her hometown of Minneapolis and entered Terrarium Studios with producer Rob Oesterlin, where she laid down ten songs on acoustic guitar. “It’s basically just like a live solo show,” Lenker describes, “but with an added twist.” She then enlisted NYC friend Andrew Sarlo to mix the album (he would later produce and mix Masterpiece and engineer, produce and mix Capacity), and on January 24, 2014 Hours Were the Birds was released into the world.
Drenched in beautiful imagery and intimate stories, it is the work of a woman on a journey, conquering new territory with bravery and honesty.

EXPECTED RELEASE DATE: 12/11/26.

PRE-ORDER DISCLAIMER: Release dates are tentative and often get pushed back or cancelled by the labels. We try 100% to get you what you order, but there are times when we aren’t allotted enough of the item to fill all of the orders (and usually we won’t know this until the week of the release). In this case we will contact you as soon as we are aware that the order can’t be fulfilled. Special limited/indie exclusive releases can be ordered in multiples, but we can’t guarantee that we will be able to fill more than one copy of each said release.

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