Big Thief don’t write typical hits. The first thing that sticks when listening is its sound profile. Adrianne Lenker’s characteristic voice, a peculiar warmth that has nothing of the instant cosiness of popular folk-pop, but seems very physical, as if radiated by a living being at this very moment. The next thing you notice is her composure. They play like they’re sure they’re doing something worthwhile. But not as if it just fell into their laps, but as if they really work until they come up with something that breathes on its own and needs no artificial effects, no fuss.
Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You is their fifth studio album. Adrianne Lenker, the singer, comes to the zoom interview straight from the street, she drove from Minneapolis with her brother for three days, or maybe she was there before or wants to go there first. She drove because of her dog, she says. The dog’s name is Oto. Does he like your music? “I think so. He’s very used to my music. He’s been traveling since he was a little baby puffy. He’s been touring and he’s been in the studio, when I got him he was in the recording studio with us right away . When we recorded the new album.”
be immortal? First of all, she wants to know exactly how she should imagine it
She speaks softly and calmly. With great seriousness. The album opens with “Change”. It’s one of those songs that seems to have always existed and was just waiting for someone to scrape it out of the veteran music rock. It’s about the burden of immortality – no less than that! – and the need for change to stay alive. After all, he gives the listener a say. “Would you live forever, never die / While everything around passes? / Would you smile forever, never cry / While everything you know passes?” sings Lenker in the song. Would she want to be immortal herself?
She strokes her very short hair as if she wasn’t really used to it yet. And want to know the conditions. “I wouldn’t want to be immortal as a human being. Not in that form because I would find that very sad if everyone weren’t immortal. But if everyone were immortal, would there be birth? Would there be grandparents? Would there be children? How would that work?” If anything, she would want to be immortal as the ocean or the sky or stardust. She could also come to terms with being a forest or clouds, she says.
For a singer who would like to be Stardust, Big Thief have a high output. Two albums were released in 2019. 2020 Adrianne Lenker’s famous solo album, 2021 a live EP. “By the way” they recorded their new album – a double album. “Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You” originally contained almost 50 songs. Now it’s “only” 20. Sometimes they walk close to format indie or country folk noodles, but you can listen to songs like “Certainty” almost indefinitely until time stops and you cry. With happiness, of course.
Perhaps a more rigorous selection of ideas would have resulted in an even denser album. On the other hand, this band in particular needs space to find that serenity that makes their unmistakable sound possible in the first place. One of the strengths of the album “Dragon New Warm Mountain…” is that it depicts this process. Although – or precisely because – Big Thief do without technological frills, rely on traditional instruments and are deeply rooted in the American formal language, their musical range is large. Sometimes they open the stage with spring-reverberating e-guitars, then comes a very intimate, somewhat noisy acoustic guitar sketch. Noisy indie rock is followed by dusty-sweet country.
It was deliberately recorded in very different places, from Upstate New York to California, with different sound engineers and each with their own sound concepts. Drummer James Krivchenia developed this approach to reflect the full spectrum of Adrienne Lenker’s songwriting. That seems to have worked. At the price of a somewhat inhomogeneous overall picture, but with a gain in complexity.
Some of their songs actually carry you into eternity, others find the magic in the banal. The eponymous track “Dragon New…” could be about how (according to the lyrics) “a billion planets are born” – or about a particularly pleasant phone call: “There’s a dragon in the phone line / Coughing up a mighty flame / With a tonguе of silver, silver / Calling out my oldest name.” Let someone else say that smartphones are less than transcendental!
The main thing is that interest in sweets has not suffered from growing up
The singer laughs. “Oh wow. A phone call! I really like that description. Sometimes a nice phone call with a friend is so beautiful that you start believing in the beauty of life again. I remember as a kid I was really sure that Magic exists. This is magic. Somehow, our solar system is spread out in a way that allows Earth to exist with life on it. And we hurtle through space like a stream of morning geese. Have you ever watched geese at sunset? We wouldn’t have to consider these things feel beautiful. But something about them is.”
When she was a child, she says, she always thought that she would never grow up and that she wanted to stop believing in magic and eating sweets. “I was so scared that all the adults around me wouldn’t be interested in candy, and I was like, ‘What? I’ll never be uninterested in candy.'” She kept her word.