![]() The playfulness of these performances juxtaposes with the increasing abstraction of Lenker’s lyrics. It is the kind of song that defies the band’s downbeat reputation, that stares at you with a wild glint, daring you to resist its giddy revelry. A wailing fiddle, played by guest member Mat Davidson (aka Twain), loosens up the country stomp of “Red Moon” and the gorgeous, blue-eyed harmonies of “Dried Roses.” “Spud Infinity” is the most striking departure, an unabashedly goofy singalong, with lyrics about elbows and potato knishes that Lenker nearly rejected for their uncharacteristic irreverence, and the most conspicuous use of a Jew’s harp since Leonard Cohen jauntily deployed one in the middle of a song about 9/11. There is a jubilance to these performances, even a joyousness. ![]() It is Big Thief’s loosest album and most ambitious album all at once. Instead, it revels in the earthy, joyously uncool tones of a ’70s hippie-folk record excavated from a garage sale. There is no successor to “Not” here, nothing that belongs on a mid-2010s indie mood board. It is an uncommonly warm and generous record, 20 songs in all-flitting from campfire folk (“Change”) to clanging cosmic rumination (“Time Escaping”) to countrified hoedown (“Spud Infinity”) in its first three tracks alone-and it solidifies Adrianne Lenker’s place as one of the greatest songwriters to emerge in the last five years.ĭragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You is not really an indie-rock album, at least not in the way that Two Hands was. The result is Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You, a freewheeling creature that vibrates with the restlessness and ramshackle intimacy that have long distinguished this band, blown out to a new scale. By the last session, they had generated some 45 completed songs. Faced with their longest break from touring since 2016’s Masterpiece came out, they wrote at a feverish pace and spent five months recording in four distinct sessions-in upstate New York, in California, in the Rocky Mountains, and in Tucson-with four different engineers. The first year of the pandemic allowed Big Thief the time and space to indulge this hubristic tradition. When I saw the group at Webster Hall that October, what I most remember is thinking about what a rare joy it is to see a great band performing at the absolute peak of their powers.Īnd what great bands often do when they realize they’re at the peak of their powers is make a double album. Audiences greeted songs that had existed in the world for mere months as though they were age-old classics. The band’s tour that year felt like a coronation. They had been making records for only three years, but that year Big Thief operated with the poise and audacity of a far more established band: releasing two stellar albums mere months apart, saying things like one album is the “earth twin” of the other, singing tributes to the homeless and voiceless with Bono-level earnestness, overwhelming a CBS This Morning studio audience with the lacerating guitar heroics of Two Hands standout track “Not.” AAA is a very labor and resource intensive process and it has a wide array of limitations compared to digital record making, but there is no other way we could have achieved both the capture and delivery of this music without it.In 2019, Big Thief solidified their place as reigning legends of emotionally fragile folk-rock, purveyors of music that could just as easily soundtrack a séance as a midday coffee shop. The entire workflow becomes a part of the music in a way that is simply not possible when working in digital audio. The computer screen is not glowing while the music is being recorded. The fine-toothed editing and micro adjustments that every modern record relies on are not available. Weinrobe describes the process in more detail: “ Not only does this process allow for a very specific type of sonic experience to come alive, but the process also dictates how we work. ![]() No digital process was used in the production of this sound recording. ![]() This recording is 100% analog-analog-analog (AAA). I was very surprised and elated to see that this pressing is AAA! I was so wrapped up in it that I had to go over to 4AD to buy the vinyl (2 LP pressing containing both songs and instrumentals). Further proof of Lenker's skill as a songwriter and, in the case of instrumentals, a conjurer of feeling and atmosphere. and Two Hands) and it was great! Sparse, intimate and emotional. Listened to the new albums this morning (along with the last two Big Thief records, U.F.O.F. ![]()
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