Big Thief

Track	Album / Single
Masterpiece	Masterpiece
Real Love	Masterpiece
Parallels	Masterpiece
Pretty Things	Capacity
Capacity	Capacity
Coma	Capacity
Mary	Capacity
Breathe In My Lungs	Mythological Beauty B-side
From	U.F.O.F.
Orange	U.F.O.F.

 

 

Big Thief playlist

 

Big Thief are a folk-rock band from New York. They are a conduit for Adrianne Lenker’s elliptical songs of survival, loss and yearning – intimate and intricate pieces punctuated by occasional shards of dissonant, anguished feedback. Sometimes I think they sound like Pixies if it was Kristin Hersh who’d befriended Joey Santiago and not Black Francis, other times they remind me of Karen Dalton, Kate Bush, even Cocteau Twins. Don’t be put off by the folk-rock thing, they are a band who defy easy categorisation.

 

MASTERPIECE

“Old stars/Filling up my throat”

All great debut albums start off with a declaration of intent. Masterpiece’s title track lets you know what Big Thief are all about from the get go – an extraordinary song about the agonies of trying to let go of someone.

 

REAL LOVE

“If your speech slurs, if you feel shaky/Meet me out back, I’ll be there waiting”

Love is an ugly, terrible, brutal thing in the wrong hands. Drunkenness, domestic violence, heart attacks – the end of love is here in all its terrible ways, punctuated by the kind of nerve-shredding Pixies-do-the-blues guitar solo to end all such solos.

 

PARALLELS

“Caterpillar on the floor/Can you teach me to transform?”

A song about just wanting someone that little bit too much. And, talking of much, no one ever filled that word with quite as much yearning as Lenker does here.

 

PRETTY THINGS

“There is a meeting in my thighs/Where in thunder and lightning/Men are baptised”

A mildly terrifying song about the masculinity and femininity in all of us, and our dependence on that duality.

 

CAPACITY

“Flight is a beautiful word”

Apparently a song about a dream she’d had the night before, Lenker becomes the first lyricist to get the word ‘consonance’ into a rock song. I say rock song, it’s more of a collapsing semi-waltz, the sound of a band lurching between dreams and reality. I have no idea what I mean by that.

 

COMA

“You won’t recognise your house”

A song sung to a mother who is either physically or metaphorically unconscious, this was the first song I heard by Big Thief. I hadn’t even heard of the band until a well-known music streaming service added it to the end of a short playlist I had made. Coma is unsettling, ethereal and ambiguous.

 

MARY

“Will you love me like you loved me and I’ll never ask for more”

Adrianne explains: “It’s about childhood being brought to life and reignited after the slush of the teenage years” – and it is, arguably, the most beautiful lyric she has written to date. Mary is both mournful and celebratory, a wonderful balancing act and on the live version here, it almost sounds like it’s going to turn into An American Trilogy for a second or two.

 

BREATHE IN MY LUNGS

“Lifting the edge of her bed, walking a girl to the altar.”

I’m not entirely sure what this song is supposed to be about. I think it’s a conversation between a mother and an unborn child. I could be wrong. It’s a fragile affair, instruments that are barely present adding to the dreamlike quality.

 

FROM

“One ear to your womb, puppy on the floor. Baby’s coming soon …”

As sinister and hypnotic as it is nebulous and delicate, Lenker’s voice takes on an almost Liz Fraser like quality here, almost speaking in tongues.

 

ORANGE

“Fragile means that I can hear her flesh”

I had the immense privilege of seeing them live in Bristol this year. If they ever come your way, make sure you go. The single greatest gig I’ve ever been to. And when she sang this, it was all I could do not to float away on her sweet harmony. Absolutely jaw dropping.

 

Masterpiece (Saddle Creek 2016)
Capacity (Saddle Creek 2017)
U.F.O.F. (4AD 2019)
Two Hands (4AD 2019)

Big Thief official website

Big Thief bandcamp

Big Thief on Discogs

‘Abysskiss’ solo album by Adrianne Lenker, photo Zoë Lenker

Adrianne Lenker official website

Paul Jenkins is a pop music obsessive living in fear of being found out as the owner of two Tight Fit singles. His opinions on life in general can be gleaned from his Twitter account. He lives in South Wales. His other posts on this site are on Arab Strap, Tindersticks, Grandaddy, Fonda 500 and Silver Jews.

TopperPost #803