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| photo by Dustin Condren |
featuring the very best of americana, alt.country and roots music
February 19, 2022
Scott Foley, purveyor of dust
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It's not easy to write about things we love. It can be a challenge to achieve perspective, to find meaningful language and to honor how music makes us feel. Maybe it's how Big Thief singer and songwriter Adrianne Lenker encountered the challenge of the band's fifth record, Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You (4AD). The double album is both sprawling and intimate, a magnum opus and a candid snapshot of a moment in time.
It was largely percussionist James Krivenchia's idea, deploying the quartet to four very different locales as a way to fully honor and to focus Lenker's writerly vision, her wily, feverish, inspired muse. Big Thief stepped out of that cocoon with their most diverse and organic project to date. Dragon juxtaposes percussive, angular pieces with warm acoustic folk, loose jammy hoots with moments of vulnerable, fiery passion. The wooly project coheres behind the band's remarkable rapport, an unspoken wavelength in service to Adrianne Lenker's vision.
Despite my wordy paragraphs, there is an endearing simplicity to many of Dragon's twenty songs. The strummy guitar and scratchy fiddle contribute to the domesticity of "Dried Roses": Leave the bed unmade / Draw the light green shade / Start the microwave / Dried roses. Set to tape in the Colorado mountains, "No Reason" adds a pastoral flute to the sweet homespun harmonies: Come together for a moment, look around and dissolve. Seeming companion pieces, "Change" and "Certainty" are melodic touchstones, with the directness of Lenker's lyrics serving as koans for more elusive truths: My certainty is wild, weaving / For you I am a child, believing.
The everydayness of Dragon's settings also embraces an abiding sensuality on songs like "Blurred View". Atop its trip-hop rhythms and slippery fretless bass, Lenker murmurs: I am the sweaty sheets / The wet bed / The things she'll do and the things she said / I'll come for you, come for you. She upends the Garden of Eden on "Sparrow", portraying the prowling Adam in pursuit of a nakedly running Eve: I wish I'd have spoken to call her, she sings on the patiently blooming folk cut, Before she found fabric to shawl her.
Produced by Big Thief's resident drummer, Dragon is an appropriately percussive collection. The individual contributors are bound by a great sense of artistic trust (Krivenchia on drums, Max Oleatchik on bass and Buck Meek and Lenker on guitars, with worthy contributions made by Twain's Mat Davidson), emphasizing presence over perfection on sessions that were largely recorded live. The fascinating "Time Escaping" showcases prepared guitars that sound like mbiras, with clattering percussion that lends the song an almost African vibe. The bewitching groove carries into the mounting noise of "Little Things", a cut that finds Lenker admitting Maybe I'm a a little obsessed / Maybe you do use me. Even over the space of two discs, the spell cast by Big Thief is consistently alluring, presenting the act in an altogether different light than on their previous work as a group or as solo artists.
Both the players' interdependence and their sense of whimsy shine through most appealingly on Dragon's looser jams. With its whoops and fiddle, "Red Moon" finds Big Thief at their most rootsy: Radio singing from the corner of the kitchen / I got the oven on, I got the onions wishing / They hadn't made me cry. "Spud Infinity" is a deceptively silly track, disguising many of the collection's philosophical themes beneath jaw harp and occasionally corny rhymes. "Blue Lightning" is a rambling Dead-like number, reportedly a loveletter of sorts from Adrianne Lenker to her bandmates: I wanna be the shoelace that you tie.
Blog reviews published since the release of Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You have recognized the record as a special beast. From the simple brilliance of its arrangements to a pervasive spirit that is simultaneously as trad as the Holy Modal Rounders and as contemporary as Wilco in its more organic moments, it's a terrifically diverse project. At its heart is the warm and tangled heart of Adrianne Lenker, both intensely her own and laid bare for all to see. The songs of Dragon speak to the extremes of complexity and simplicity, of coming together and drifting apart. Her lyrics posit us within nature, while also acknowledging the nature that dwells within us. Eternity in this moment. Most impressively, Big Thief strike a balance between these dualities without pretention, without resorting to overstatement or leftover lyrics from a Rush record. Lenker knows how words sound together, how they can generate friction or invite harmony. In nine months, Dragon may set my baseline against which other albums must measure. For now, it's as impressive a musical statement as we've heard in many months.
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Been too long since we highlighted a handful of the forthcoming roots music releases featured on A Routes & Branches Guide To Feeding Your Monster. Following a couple promising self-released projects, the Virginia based 49 Winchester have become the most recent signees to the New West label. Expect Fortune Favors the Bold to land on shelves wherever music matters on May 13. Looking forward to the next volley from Left Arm Tan. We're told Undefeated is due May 20. Orville Peck has begun releasing songs from the forthcoming follow-up to 2019's Pony. April 8 is the expected debut date for the enigmatic crooner's Bronco (Columbia). Brennen Leigh has collaborated with several different artists throughout her career. Asleep at the Wheel serve as her backing band on the appropriately titled Obsessed With the West (Signature Sounds, May 6). Finally, one of our favorite songwriters, John Calvin Abney, is waiting no time before releasing his next collection. Tourist has been slated for August 5 (Black Mesa).
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