- At its best, Adrianne Lenker’s songwriting is almost damagingly emotive. You might not notice at first, particularly when whacking it on as the soundtrack to the elongated kinds of road trips that Big Thief’s music is perfectly suited to, but most of the songs on Masterpiece tell stories involving serious heartbreak and/or -ache.

Especially the songs named after people. Lorraine, Paul, Randy, and rather more generally, Humans, are some of the most brutally confessional and pure songs I’ve heard from a Brooklyn rawk band in quite a while. This is no accident – that the songs with the most searing levels of pain and sorrow inside them are those directly inspired by people – and actually the main point of the record. Relationships die, people suck, life hurts, and you’ve just got to keeping on living through it.

Lenker addresses how insurmountable this task can sometimes feel on the title track, stating: “old friends, old mothers, dogs and brothers / there’s only so much letting go you can ask someone to do.” It’s one of those songs that rambles and stumbles all around like a pleasantly drunk person operating in fully-fledged truth mode, with a melody-rich chorus made all the more memorable for its repetition.

Speaking of which, the melodies and choruses on this record often have this amiable, cold-but-warm quality to them – like falling asleep with oven mitts and novelty headphones on. So it’s nicely suited to any kind of winter mood. Vegas and Real Love are both like this. The chord progressions and rhythmic kinks in these songs don’t really accommodate static melodies – they force Lenker to zip around a bit and explore her range, which explains the often unpredictable, angular flavour. Impressively though, none of this gets in the way of what she tries to convey vocally. It actually enhances it.

Lenker describes Masterpiece as being about “the masterpiece of existence” – the difficulties of navigating it, the peace sometimes found in resigning yourself to its drama. Not necessarily looking at life as if it’s some kind of interesting movie, but more trying to develop some overarching perspective that’ll make it all seem less pointless and weird. Thankfully, doing that is mostly achievable, and sometimes, you can even channel all the B.S. into the creation of a rock album as generous and wholesome as this.

- Joe Saxby.