Big thief songs1/14/2024 She and Meek began Big Thief in Brooklyn. Lenker largely grew up in suburban Minneapolis, her parents having moved there after leaving a Christian sect that had controlled every aspect of their lives. Meek is from Wimberley, a small town near Austin. A lot of musicians I know felt similarly in terms of like, ‘There’s a pretty huge silver lining to the lockdown’.”īut they eventually regrouped and, on Dragon New Warm Mountain, produced a collection that draws on their contrasting backgrounds. “Personally, and as a band, it felt good to have some indefinite time with nothing on the books. “Everyone in the band needed those months of sitting alone and being like, ‘What have I been doing in the past five years?’ ” says Krivchenia. A few weeks later, she rented a cabin in the pine woods of western Massachusetts and tried to leave behind the outside world. It got so bad a friend drove her to hospital in Brooklyn. In those early weeks, Lenker developed shingles and came down with crippling migraines. Her ex is a ghost swirling through Dragon New Warm Mountain, as made clear on songs such as Little Things, where she intones, “Turn in your direction/ Feeling like I need attention”. The unravelling of her relationship with Sparke didn’t help. Are we going to be in Copenhagen for a year?’ ”īack in the US, Lenker briefly fell apart physically and emotionally. That night there was the Trump travel ban. But when the curtain fell it was pretty sudden. It’s really sad.’ And there was this like, ‘Oh’. “Between the first and the second, Jess, our tour manager, walks in and is like, ‘Show’s been cancelled. We were playing two sets,” says Krivchenia. “We knew it was going to be our last show. Afterwards, they went straight to the airport. Lenker wore a bright orange hoodie with her face almost entirely obscured. Meek, Lenker and company shuffled outside and put on a short impromptu performance for fans. Midway through a European tour, they were about to go on stage in Copenhagen when the Danish government announced a Covid lockdown. Are we going to be in Copenhagen for a year?' And when things came to a halt it was with an audible shudder. Since the release in 2016 of their debut album, Masterpiece, and all the way up to March 2020, Big Thief were on the road almost constantly (the individual members also released a number of solo records). “She’s brilliantly confessional.”Ī work ethic verging on punishing has helped spread the word. “The lyrics spoke to me like a journal entry would,” she said of Lenker. The sentiments were echoed by Carly Rae Jepsen, every hipster’s favourite pop star. The magazine quoted Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy, who hailed Lenker’s songs as “so sideways it subverts the form”. In 2020 the New Yorker, in a lengthy profile of Lenker, characterised their output as “strange and chilling”. Rolling Stone described it as “spellbinding” and “transcendent”. Three years ago, their third record, UFOF, was nominated for a Grammy for best alternative album. The speed of their ascent can be measured in the often extravagant praise they have attracted. “There’s definitely this feeling of sacredness around it: ‘This is special.’ It’s not ordinary to be interacting with something this powerful.” And wanting to nourish and support it,” says James Krivchenia, Big Thief drummer and producer of the new LP. “There’s a sense of wanting to respect the vulnerability that Adrianne’s putting into the music. Through it all, Big Thief have steamed ever forward. And it followed her hospitalisation for exhaustion after the lockdown brought an end to years of constant touring.Įvery so often an underground rock band breaks through and recreates the zeitgeist in their image Their new album, Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You, was recorded as Lenker grieved for the ending of her relationship with Australian musician Indigo Sparke. Within the lifespan of the group, Meek and Lenker have fallen in love, married and then divorced. There have been plenty of rumblings in the story of Big Thief. “That made its way – literally and also just energetically – on to the recordings.” “A big train would shake the house,” recalls guitarist Buck Meek, who formed Big Thief seven years ago with his then girlfriend, Adrianne Lenker. The walls rumbled, the floorboards shuddered. Every half hour or so a locomotive chugged past. Their destination was a studio belonging to a musician friend that overlooked a railway line. Late into the recording of their new album, American indie band Big Thief packed up their gear and drove south to Tucson, Arizona.
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