REVIEW: Big Thief - Capacity

Kelly Kirwan

Adrianne Lenker is twenty-five years old. At first I repeated this in my empty kitchen, as if an invisible, omnipresent voice would confirm or deny. This isn’t to belittle her age or ignore all the success stories that belong to child prodigies (although we know they can sometimes take a turn). Mostly, it was her voice—with which I had only just been acquainted—and how it quavered and soared, imbued with a wisdom that we often don’t expect from someone so young. But Adrianne Lenker's life has left her with a sage mind, a rueful eye, and an affinity for indie folk that's on full display in her band, Big Thief.

Following up their full-length debut, Masterpiece, Big Thief has returned with their sophomore offering, Capacity. The cover is a true picture of adolescence—a boy holding a baby, perhaps a young father and son. It’s a snapshot that is brimming with a sense of nostalgia. It feels like it was plucked from a shoebox closed decades ago, the sort of photo your parents show you after a few glasses of wine. You marvel at how different they looked, still grappling with the fact that they had a life (not dissimilar to your own) before you ever arrived. From this image, you can begin to parse out the themes to come on the eleven tracks inside—the nature of our ever-evolving lives and who they intertwine with, and of course, what meaning we ascribe to it all.

Take "Pretty Things," which comes to life with revolving, richly resonant guitar strings alongside Lenker’s soft voice, which rises delicately before falling again into murmurs that feel both intimate and nonchalant, like an expected truth uttered with a shrug of the shoulder. “There’s a meeting in my thighs / Where in thunder and lightning / Men are baptized / In their anger and fighting / Their deceit and lies.” It’s a line that I came back to not only for its poetry, but for its grit. It’s beautiful without dressing up scenarios into neat, digestible euphemisms. As Lenker sings in an array of high notes for her finish, “Don’t take me for a fool / There’s a woman inside of me / There’s one inside of you, too / And she don’t always do pretty things.”

Then there’s "Mythological Beauty," with its percussive frame and passing resemblance to '90s alternative. It has an easy pace, as if we’re watching a reel of old family videos, yet it’s once again filled with that aforementioned bluntness. It’s a wonderful song, tracing the story of Lenker’s mother: from “Seventeen you took his cum / And you gave birth to your first life,” to when she held the life-threatening gash on Lenker’s forehead as a small child. It’s a song thats tinged with a certain sadness, and yet a simultaneous willingness to forgive. Capacity is a narrative of young families, finding one’s way, and how all those universal themes are packed into such significant, individual memories. It’s a trip worth taking.

REVIEW: Big Thief - Masterpiece

Kelly Kirwan

Folk is imbued with a wry and rueful wisdom. It's weighted with history, one that usually involves a pattern of hurt and healing as cyclical as the changing seasons. Emotions laid bare, told with a sense of grit. Folk personified, for me, has always taken the shape of a sage, tucked away in the forest with an acoustic guitar and deep, soul-grazing stare. That is, until I listened to Brooklyn four-piece Big Thief, and suddenly that image was replaced with a more tangible one just a borough away. The band's latest album, Masterpiece, is a mingling of folk, rock 'n' roll, and a bit of the blues. Despite their urban home base, their body of work draws your mind to wooded expanses—a flit of lush landscapes and rolling hills, viewed from the driver’s side window. Big Thief has an air of wanderlust, not quite lost, not quite ready to settle down.

It's an idea not too far from the band's reality. They've clocked a fair number of hours in their affectionately-named van, Bonnie, and traveled deep into the woods of West Virginia to reach a gig (detours and mud-locked tires followed). Even Adrianne Lenker's vocals have a pixie-like quality, evocative of the folk prince himself, Bob Dylan. If we were to take a pencil and draw an outline of her pitch, we'd be left with a rough sketch of Appalachian peaks. Both are equally breathtaking.

Tracks like "Velvet Ring" take on a narrative quality, and in this case, it's a fractured love story. The song begins with a warm guitar riff that occasionally peters into a slow strum, as Lenker sings in a hushed and occasionally hurried tone. It's as if she's whispering in our ears, quick details of some strained past. Her lyrics are dark and poetically written, with lines like "The light would flicker like a violent wound / The night was thicker than a smokey fume / The lies awaited in the room" drawing us into the decaying pieces of these lovers’ world.

In fact, Lenker has an affinity for writing lyrics that are poignant even when they veer into cruder territory. Big Thief isn’t big frills, and Masterpiece proves they don’t need them. Their album plays like a series of memories, each layer of their tracks a picture in a scrapbook. Which was actually the band’s driving ethos, with "Masterpiece" referring to the fabric of human existence, "...people attempting to connect, to both shake themselves awake and to shake off the numbness of certain points in their life."

Big Thief attacks the peaks and pits of our lives from every angle. There’s no room to fall into apathy when their sound is this beguiling. Lenker’s lilt comes to life with Buck Meek’s guitar, Max Oleartchik on bass, and Jason Burger handling the drums. Set to release Masterpiece on Saddle Creek, these four quench any sort of thirst for the good old days. They bring the objects of our nostalgia into the present, even if they only last a song.