The fields glow in the last light, a dry wind whirls dust across the asphalt. There, where the city ends and emptiness begins, Lener stands in the open barn doorway. The Fender Strat hangs low, the jacket too big, the eyes sharp. A figure like an echo from another time or one that doesn’t yet fully exist. Raised on a remote farm at the edge of the city of Freising, between the forest’s edge and a flat, barren expanse. For many years her distorted guitars thundered in the empty barn, through the old wooden slats and out into the wasteland. At night, the adjacent forest chirped and howled. In search of witches and ghosts, Lener would creep through the trees with her triplet sisters, later stalking magical material for her first songs.

Lener’s songs are hymns to what was, what might have been, and to the courage to keep going anyway. “Maybe in another life,” she sings, as the drums seethe beneath like a raging torrent of thoughts. A hymn for all the decisions never made, for all the turnoffs that led into the unknown. A line for those who lie awake at night wondering what would have happened if but that is precisely where its power lies: in the realization that it doesn’t matter. That every direction is the right one, as long as it feels true.