Skip to main content[POST-FOLK] 'My name is Adrian Orange/ I know a lot about not knowing/ So I make CDs full of helpless things/ Why don't you put...on the record and set them free.' Perhaps it's this line alone, with its naked proper-noun introduction, that inspired Adrian Orange—known in the musical world as Thanksgiving—to drop the holiday moniker. Or, maybe after 11 releases, the 20-year-old has just plain worn it out.
In any case, Orange's birth name is more fitting. Thanksgiving implied a solitary Orange occasionally backed by such notable friends as Phil Elvrum, whose Microphones' lo-fi folk aesthetic is likely wired into Orange for life—but slightly less so on Orange's recent Bitches Is Lord, which is relatively rock-ish compared to his work as Thanksgiving. Releasing an album under his own name is, more than anything, honest, which Bitches is in all of its awkward, vulnerable glory. This record is one of humility. On the title track, a wide-eyed and head-bowed Orange confesses his inadequacy while dismissing it in the same breath: 'Let's save the world/ Or at least push our luck.' That sense of smallness is a consistent theme throughout the disc's 15 tracks, though nearly one-third of them include 'world' in their titles.
While lyrically humble, Bitches Is Lord is a musical fireball in all the right places. Orange is a damn good guitar player, and he managed to put much of the music on Bitches together alone in a room. Thanksgiving's In the World was recorded in a similar fashion, but that record is mainly Orange and a guitar, while Bitches is a weave of lo-fi Thanksgiving-esque folk and straight-up rock. 'No More Wild,' for instance, is a racing song of guitar collisions and vocals that break free—or attempt to break free—of Orange's characteristically trailing, self-effacing style. Yet, at a perfect moment while singing the words 'And the street lighhhhts look like moons,' Orange's voice breaks, veering left for a moment before falling back into place. It's as if Orange is reminding us that we're just people here, that those moments when our voices trip up or our guitar strings snap—moments of seeming failure—are perhaps our best, simply because we pushed far enough to reach them.
WWeek 2015