Review: Smaller solo sound still earns a large reception for Big Thief’s Adrianne Lenker

As dance beats pumped loudly outside from a Pride block party along Hennepin Avenue, Adrianne Lenker quietly created a whole other kind of thump-thump-thumping inside the State Theatre on Sunday night.

The singer for the increasingly influential folk-rock band Big Thief had her audience members’ hearts jumping and pounding for the second of two sold-out solo-acoustic gigs in her former home state.

Her 95-minute performance was often hushed, rarely got above midtempo urgency and always sounded tender and fragile. By show’s end, though, it still felt like a jubilant celebration and emotional thrill ride.

“This place is definitely in me in a deep way,” Lenker, 32, said while acknowledging her family in attendance and their roots in Minnesota (mainly around Nisswa). She also praised the Twin Cities for putting on such widespread Pride festivities.

This backdrop may have added an extra tinge of sentiment on her end, but Lenker always seems to pour her heart out for audiences whether she’s with her experimental, Grammy-winning band or playing all by herself.

“I wish I was better at being alone,” she sang in her unmistakably wavering but strong voice in the direction-pondering solo-LP oldie “Steamboat,” lyrics that sounded ironic.

Lenker actually has gotten better at solo shows. Her finger-picking guitar work sounded much fuller and more evocative Sunday — and her voice way more pronounced — than at her last solo gigs at the Cedar Cultural Center in 2021, when Big Thief was just beginning to break big. Conversely, she lost none of the intimate vibe moving up to a much larger venue (a size Big Thief has now outgrown).

Big Thief tunes were sprinkled in here and there throughout Sunday’s set list, starting with the night’s second song, “Simulation Swarm.” Other selections from the band’s catalog included “Spud Infinity” (joyously performed with her brother Noah Lenker on jaw harp), “Forgotten Eyes” (given a more upbeat, twangy spin) and “Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You” (saved for a moving encore finale).

The crowd seemed as familiar and smitten with songs off her lesser-known solo LPs — a sign of the cultish devotion developing around Lenker as a songwriter.

After some of the 2,200 fans quietly murmured lyrics in the night’s opening song, “Not a Lot, Just Forever,” she urged them to go all-in singing along to another of her solo favorites, “Anything.” And just like that, the show took on a strong campfire-sing-along vibe, which carried through to “Sadness as a Gift,” “Steamboat” and “Indiana,” too.

The mood turned heavy here and there. In “Donut Seam,” Lenker sang about getting in a good swim before the world’s water dries up. She introduced another darkly poetic new song, “Fangs Lungs Ankles,” as being sold online to benefit the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund.

Those moments were balanced out by lighter highlights such as “Born for Loving You,” which she admitted was written about the night’s opening act, Texan Americana strummer Staci Foster, who she is dating.

With the sort of clumsy giddiness of one of John Prine’s more romantic tunes, Lenker sang, “From my first steps to my first words / To waddling around looking at birds / To the teenage nightmare, mine and yours / Thank God we made it through / ‘Cause I was born for loving you.”

And there went the hearts.