Big Thief - Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You

ILM EOY #1 album 2022 and I haven’t listened to it yet.

if the follow-up arrives this year too it'll get vote-split and just miss out, again

if there's a backlash it's all created in our minds

so much of what we struggle with is just made up

here's the video for their hit song "that's my grandma"

📹

7 tracks in, and I think this was the followup to UFOF that i wanted. Something about Two Hands never clicked for me (or maybe i just rinsed UFOF so hard that i needed a break from them for a bit). anyway along with the new spoon (and napalm death mini!), what a great week.

just heard an interview with meek where he said they did indeed consider putting out all ~45 tracks from these sessions all at once, but with a gimmick where the album would have 5 different tracklists for people to choose between

lol they should just release the album again but shuffle the tracks and give it a different title and say it's a new record.

I listen to every one of this band's albums a couple times and then I go back to Capacity. I think that po-faced Pinback style was the best compliment to Adrienne's songs/voice, idk! I love her solo album though

on my first play through. three things:

1. the title track is just stunningly gorgeous
2. “little things” has unlocked for me, makes me think of solsbury hill, a smidge
3. still love “spud infinity” and its lyrics that go so far towards the goofy side that they wind up profound

When I say celestial
I mean extraterrestrial
I mean accepting the alien you've rejected in your own heart
When I say heart, I mean finish
The last one there is a potato knish
Baking too long in the sun of Spud Infinity
When I say infinity, I mean now
Kiss the one you are right now
Kiss your body up and down, other than your elbows
'Cause as for your elbows, they're on their own
Wandering like a rolling stone
Rubbing up against the edges of experience

and then the drum mic overloading on the drumfill, right at the end of it, distorting on an off-beat 8th note leading in, just perfect

“wake me up to drive” is quite the curveball, like lenker decided her song was too springsteen and compensated by adding hi-nrg percussion

that one reminds me of earlier magnetic fields, instrumentally

otm

true but that’s a total springsteen melody

i think the outlier here is "flower of blood". it's not that it's bad. i can imagine an album full of songs like that which would absolutely rule. it just doesn't quite fit here

“i wanna be the shoelace that you tie”

Someone mentioned “Hope”-era Palace vibes in places, OTM.

My understanding is basically The Discourse started as a criticism of the way male music critics (& fans) pedestal a select handful of ‘female fronted’ bands & that devolved into whether or not Big Thief is worth the hype in the review of their new album & now it’s memes I think

— allie (@A_philharmonic8) February 12, 2022

twitter yesterday

pretty much entirely a conversation not worth knowing about imo

up until now, only 3 twitters did

nothing like completely ignoring the discourse and listening to a silly song about potatoes

Ignore Twitter entirely it’s very easy

I never see Music Twitter, thankfully

fellas is it “broification” to be into Big Thief? pic.twitter.com/ex8tPgKoRl

— Kory (@Koryisboring) February 10, 2022

Someone mentioned “Hope”-era Palace vibes in places, OTM.

― war mice (hardcore dilettante), Saturday, February 12, 2022 bookmarkflaglink

It’s the combo of a relaxed acoustic vibe, plus Buck’s backing vocals which really reminds me of the person (Sean O’Hagan I think) who sings backup on a lot of Palace songs in that era.

I listen to every one of this band's albums a couple times and then I go back to Capacity. I think that po-faced Pinback style was the best compliment to Adrienne's songs/voice, idk! I love her solo album though

― flamboyant goon tie included, Saturday, February 12, 2022 10:12 AM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

This is p much me as well, and Pinback is a good and interesting reference point that wouldn’t have occurred to me.

What happens at the beginning of Love Love Love? It’s like they hit record right in the middle of her singing or saying something

Ya I hope I didn’t sound like a naysayer, just that Capacity is some all-time miracle work is all :)

I see lyrics quoted and am impressed I think I prob should be getting more engaged in my engagement with the last few records (listening with lyrics in front of me, that is)

I'm a sucker for the more complex harmonic movement they used a lot on their earlier stuff, and I'm going through a bit of withdrawal with the prevalence of simpler, three or four chord songs here.

I can hear the Pinback comparison. Most songs here seem to do the same sort of very horizontal melodies, specially the vocals. Very “conversational” style of songwriting.

I don’t know how to properly explain it but it also reminds me of Grateful Dead. There is a looseness and freedom - very “jam-like” feeling - to the way it sounds that could only come from very good musicians that have been together for a long time. It sounds as if done in one take, with some weird details that should sound amateurish but are very fun to hear e.g: the way the synths overlap each other at around min 3 on “blurred view” and fade out and agressively reappear again cutted-off a few seconds later.

the “heavy bend - Flower of blood - blurred view” run is a standout for me. I need more of that.

I’ve mentioned Pinback before (which I say not to point out how awesome I am, as you already know that, but as a simple affirmation):

It’s remarkable how many different styles and “moods” they inhabit, while always sounding like themselves. (Some of the songs on Capacity almost have a Pinback feel — that measured, chiming, tick-tock quality.)

― stop creeping my instagram storiez (morrisp), Wednesday, January 15, 2020 7:14 PM

*updates ilm.xls*

morrisp affirms the pinback/capacity connection

Highlight that cell!

i don't get paid nearly enough for this

i love the new one and the band has grown by leaps and bounds but i still think capacity has the best songs

Re: "Wake Me Up to Drive" sounding like a Springsteen / Magnetic Fields hybrid: a friend reminded me that Springsteen actually recorded a very Mag Fields–sounding song (...it doesn't sound much like "Drive," though):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AukvoNJRNQ

sing for you sing for you sing for you sing for you sing for you

i didn't listen to that, but yeah that does sound like bruce covering magnetic fields! the universes are converging

whoa that bruce thing is uncanny

Y'all have made excellent cases for this song or that song with an unearthly arrangement; but my favorite, now, is the acoustic trad "The Only Place."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJMwa0Jb2Dc

rehearsal footage from instagram

'Hope' comparisons spot on, very specific in the Palace canon but correct

“Flower of Blood” sounds to me almost like something that could have been on KROQ or 120 Minutes in the pre-grunge era… like played next to “So Alive” by Love and Rockets.

I’m getting into the new songs by listening to them in batches. They definitely released the most “impactful” songs ahead of time (other than “Red Moon”), which I think does make it a little challenging to wade thru the others.

Yeah “Flower of Blood” has a very shoegaze/alt feel going on in the background. I can’t move forward in the album because I’m obsessed with that run I mentioned earlier.

The hype is real, if only for those 3 songs this is the best I’ve heard from them.

Still absorbing a lot of this but it seems like the comparisons to Tusk and the more jarring style jumps all come in the first half. Most of the second half of the album feels like a more typical Big Thief album. Like, if they’d just released an album from “Red Moon” to the end, we might still call this more country but overall it wouldn’t feel like a major departure.

i don't think it's a much of a departure at all, just a comfortable, natural expansion of what they're capable of. there are plenty of new sounds - the country tracks, "time escaping", "little things", the drum machine on "wake me up to drive" - but they're mostly not too radical shifts from what came before. wouldn't complain at all if we got a whole album like "time escaping" though.

the boldest part of the sequencing is just "time escaping" into "spud infinity" and they pull that off fine

the tusk comparisons are mostly about it being a 20 track folk/country/rock double album that's great the whole way through, with some textural similarities at times.

capacity was such a jump forward I understand attachment to it ... I do think they've continued to evolve though in a way that is essential to me really loving them! like I totally buy into them in a pretentious auteurist way LOL...but I dont think I ignore other female fronted acts (except in the sense i ignore 99% of indie)

Lenker's solo stuff doesn't totally click for me, even though shes like THE key to the band 'working' -- but I just like the stuff they do as a group more

I recently revisited Hours Were the Birds, which I was heavily into a few years back (I even bought my dad a copy, ha ha)… it didn’t really hold up, not sure why. (Abysskiss and Songs never clicked for me in the first place, even though the songs are obviously really good.)

abysskiss & songs are both excellent singer-songwriter albums but being that they're not really as exciting as what they're capable of as a whole band