But this is Big Thief, one of the great American bands of our time, a band that has consistently challenged their audience with newness both live and on record. Across their catalog, a certain idiom has crept in more and more, a little twang that draws from Appalachian folk, country western, honky-tonk, and Americana. I remember first hearing the jocular, overalls-wearin’ “Spud Infinity” from Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You and feeling a bit disoriented. Where were these front-porch guitar-pull vibes coming from, I wondered, both in a biographical sense and as a big fan of the band’s earlier material. I felt a pang for their more cosmodelic folk side, one that seemed so starry and surreal from a band who could just levitate right off the stage if they happened upon the right frequencies.
The live performance of Horsepower really clarified something for me: Big Thief are getting grounded. This album, on first listen (and not in sequence), is about the essence of feeling and songwriting. There are lyrics here that are so simple you can practically see the shavings on the floor from Lenker whittling them down. “Wait a while, don’t hurry” goes one titular chorus; “Baby, honey, sweetheart, darlin’” goes another titular chorus; “It’s a gift, it’s a pleasure, it’s a joy” goes yet another. Lenker and the band seem to have put their trust in a few truths that govern love and life; these songs want to let those truths speak for themselves. It’s no wonder they’ve gone country.
Genesis Baez
The show began with just the four core members, but by the time they got to “21”—one of the first songs Lenker and Meek and ever wrote together, originally titled “Bloom,” an unreleased that dates back to their 2014 Daytrotter session as a couple—the stage had steadily filled out like a country western version of Stop Making Sense: Russ Pahl and Greg Leisz sat in on pedal steel and guitar, while Hannah Read, Richard Bowden, and Zosha Warpeha comprised a little fiddle trio. The whole band started cooking, and “21” sounded like the kind of tune that had been played at the Ryman on a thousand nights like tonight—the fiddles whined, the pedal steel cried, and you could imagine a few boot scoots or do-see-dos popping up if we weren’t crammed into these godforsaken pews.
With all that picking and strumming, there were moments across the horizonless, three-hour set where the soundfield felt a little crowded compared to your more agile Big Thief arrangement. The country modality presents a unique challenge for the band: How can this group of players who are so rangy yet dialed in breathe life into this rather familiar and traditional instrumentation? There were a handful of tunes, like “Stay” or the deliriously fun “Spatchcock Chickenshit Bingo,” where the band made it a little more fancy, throwing in the odd filigree or time signature—or in the case of the latter, making it sound like King Crimson at a hoedown.
Daniel D`Amico for SANREMO.FM
