2022 - USA
Indie Folk, Folk Rock, Americana, Indie Rock, Singer-Songwriter
A silent creek in Upstate New York, the hills of Topanga Canyon, the lakes beneath the Rocky Mountains, and the desert surrounding Tucson, Arizona. These are the four places where Big Thief recorded their double-album, a showcase of creativity after they released two albums in 2019, a double-album for Adrianne Lenker in 2020. More than ever before, Adrianne Lenker uses her words not only to grasp her observations, life stories and desires, but to melt within them. She is the water, the bird, the weather, the ant and the leaf, the moon and the child. She appears here more than ever before as a Nobel Prize poet. The boundaries between humanity and nature keep shrinking on songs like Red Moon, Spud Infinity and Sparrow. With her longtime obsession of sticking to rhyming structures, this phenomenon is even more clear, due to how each word seems to transform in another, one line after the other. There’s a sensation of endless shapeshifting images within the album that is embodied by the very last line, closing the final track Blue Lightning , spoken word saying “What should we do now?” But the word “now” is abruptly cut. That way, this sentence is never finished, because there will always be something else to play, somewhere else to jam. Dragon New Warm Mountain is an unfinished album, because Big Thief could have added a hundred other songs to the tracklist. That’s why during their live shows they keep playing new songs. Because, from stnt landscapes, swimming in the water, playing under the rain, singing in the dark of an outage, their music is inspired by the world around them. If it’s too hot, they won’t try to go in a perfectly air-conditioned studio. Instead they’ll try to feel this heat, to understand it and to play with it. Freeing themselves (as always) from those boundaries, Big Thief embrace their crafts(wo)manship with liquidity.
Just like the opening track says, this is all about Change. Big Thief never stop, but saying that they always move forward isn’t the right word. Instead, we could say they always move around. They are explorers, observers, musicians putting into big and small tunes the world surrounding them, the world as they experience it. And what we experience as listeners, is the blessing to feel like a part of this small family telling us how we belong in a vast universe.
And among those twenty songs, there’s not a single one you’d like to remove. The first reason is because of Adrianne Lenker’s immaculate songwriting, and the second one is because of their curiosity. Sound. How does a twenty-track album sounds like ? When The Beatles recorded their White Album, you could feel as many influences and styles as their were tracks. Physical Graffiti allowed Led Zeppelin to encapsulate every aspect of their music, from more traditional ones to experimental wonders. But here it’s in the details. Just listen how Little Things, Heavy Bend, Flower of Blood and Blurred View ensues. The production shapeshifts. But at the same time it still sounds more of the same. Big Thief’s music slides, like a thousand variations. Until we suddenly meet a rock, it’s Simulation Swarm. Maybe the most intimate song on the album, where Lenker talks about her time spent in a hospital after her body experienced too much pressure due to the relentless tours the band made. A place for your body to stay still, and your mind to wander. She thinks about her brother Andrew she doesn’t know. Past, present and future are always meshed together throughout the album and here again Lenker deals with some of her core memories, looking at herself back then and looking at herself now.
With the delighted playfulness on one side, you have the warm emotions of a tender evening on the other. It’s the title track, it’s The Only Place, it’s Promise Is a Pendulum. “I’m not saying I’m not jealous, or scared anymore / I’m just saying I could never build the shadow between your cheek and your eye.” How no to think about Lenker’s songs when hearing lyrics like this ! Just like she always does, Lenker reminds us of her vulnerability and sensitivity. She can swim in every river of the world, she doesn’t control the flow. She can smell all the flowers of the biggest gardens but still won’t know how to make one. Because she’s not the wind, and she’s not in her lover’s head. She cannot change them. So she contemplates, and makes us feel all of the emotions passing by her eyes, cascading on her skin. The greatest freedom is the moment when you realize you cannot be in control of everything, that you have the right to let go and trust the world, trust the nature, trust silence. This is what it’s all about, accepting your environment as it is and take inspiration from it to create the art and the way of life you want. Adrianne Lenker reflects for a while, and then sees herself surrounded by her bandmates on the final song Lightning Blue. Past disappears. There is only now and tomorrow that matters in here. Now the beginning goes back to its final section. The album is over for us, but not the band as they keep hitting the road, transforming day after day, leaving us with this testimony of a lifetime.art to not finish, this album is the pure sound of an eternal slice of life.
Now let’s go back to the beginning. Words and interconnectivity, the death of boundaries. “Place” and “face”, “tower” and “power”, “creatures” and “teachers” or “dawn” and “lawn”, they’re all part of the very same world. This is the main point Lenker is trying to make, how things intertwine, connect and depend on each other. She paints on different scales, whether as a lover in the backseat, an insect crawling or a star floating above. By recording this album in so many places, differe
Just like the opening track says, this is all about Change. Big Thief never stop, but saying that they always move forward isn’t the right word. Instead, we could say they always move around. They are explorers, observers, musicians putting into big and small tunes the world surrounding them, the world as they experience it. And what we experience as listeners, is the blessing to feel like a part of this small family telling us how we belong in a vast universe.
And among those twenty songs, there’s not a single one you’d like to remove. The first reason is because of Adrianne Lenker’s immaculate songwriting, and the second one is because of their curiosity. Sound. How does a twenty-track album sounds like ? When The Beatles recorded their White Album, you could feel as many influences and styles as their were tracks. Physical Graffiti allowed Led Zeppelin to encapsulate every aspect of their music, from more traditional ones to experimental wonders. But here it’s in the details. Just listen how Little Things, Heavy Bend, Flower of Blood and Blurred View ensues. The production shapeshifts. But at the same time it still sounds more of the same. Big Thief’s music slides, like a thousand variations. Until we suddenly meet a rock, it’s Simulation Swarm. Maybe the most intimate song on the album, where Lenker talks about her time spent in a hospital after her body experienced too much pressure due to the relentless tours the band made. A place for your body to stay still, and your mind to wander. She thinks about her brother Andrew she doesn’t know. Past, present and future are always meshed together throughout the album and here again Lenker deals with some of her core memories, looking at herself back then and looking at herself now.
With the delighted playfulness on one side, you have the warm emotions of a tender evening on the other. It’s the title track, it’s The Only Place, it’s Promise Is a Pendulum. “I’m not saying I’m not jealous, or scared anymore / I’m just saying I could never build the shadow between your cheek and your eye.” How no to think about Lenker’s songs when hearing lyrics like this ! Just like she always does, Lenker reminds us of her vulnerability and sensitivity. She can swim in every river of the world, she doesn’t control the flow. She can smell all the flowers of the biggest gardens but still won’t know how to make one. Because she’s not the wind, and she’s not in her lover’s head. She cannot change them. So she contemplates, and makes us feel all of the emotions passing by her eyes, cascading on her skin. The greatest freedom is the moment when you realize you cannot be in control of everything, that you have the right to let go and trust the world, trust the nature, trust silence. This is what it’s all about, accepting your environment as it is and take inspiration from it to create the art and the way of life you want. Adrianne Lenker reflects for a while, and then sees herself surrounded by her bandmates on the final song Lightning Blue. Past disappears. There is only now and tomorrow that matters in here. Now the beginning goes back to its final section. The album is over for us, but not the band as they keep hitting the road, transforming day after day, leaving us with this testimony of a lifetime.art to not finish, this album is the pure sound of an eternal slice of life.
Now let’s go back to the beginning. Words and interconnectivity, the death of boundaries. “Place” and “face”, “tower” and “power”, “creatures” and “teachers” or “dawn” and “lawn”, they’re all part of the very same world. This is the main point Lenker is trying to make, how things intertwine, connect and depend on each other. She paints on different scales, whether as a lover in the backseat, an insect crawling or a star floating above. By recording this album in so many places, differe