Big Thief - Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You

Thanks all!

I'm slowly falling in love with this record. Even better that it's led to a discussion about tunings and Fahey recommendations!

Adrianne seems like a total dude and her dog has excellent bone-chewing skillz.

xxp ah that's from my favorite glenn jones album, and never seen that vid. lovely

I love how Lenker walked away from this whole teen-star thing her dad tried to build for her and has almost certainly ended up a bigger star (of sorts) — playing weird music with her weird friends — then he ever could have made her.

Glenn played my wedding and I consider him a friend, so I'm sorry but I need to put one more youtube clip of him in here along with ums, but I promise it is on topic because every song he does is in a different tuning, and in this clip he is using a partial capo:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3L-acWwioE

amazing how songs on this record you didn't really give too much thought to hit you so hard all of a sudden. fuckin dried roses man...

Just had that feeling with Blurred View. I cannot get enough of this album, I think every song is my favourite until the next one comes on.

No Reason though lads...

Never heard them do anything so warm

or so damn catchy

and the flute

Also: "I wanna be the vape that gets you high" is such a great line

(different song, obvs. Just so many great moments on this album)

Yeah, I listened again today - separated the record into its 4-1/2 sessions in a playlist instead of listening to the album proper, and so many new chunks of awesome leaped out at me - songs I hadn’t thought about hit me harrrrd - and altho Topanga is as great as expected, each other session was just as grebt.

what's the story on adrienne's dad trying to make her a star?

https://www.discogs.com/release/12550569-AdriAnne-Lenker-Stages-Of-The-Sun

I can't work out if this album is Tusk or if it's Exile but I already prefer it to both. I literally love this album and I only heard it yesterday

I have an idea!

Yeah this album is absolutely stacked but lately I can't get past "Change" without re-listening like three times in a row. The elegant restraint of the arrangement; the way it lyrically zooms in scale from the cosmic to the personal; Death, like space / The deep sea, a suitcase.

It's even more magical knowing the album version was the very first rehearsal take they played in the studio; they didn't even know it was being recorded

Let's not compare it to other double albums!

I mean, to my ears it's a more tuneful John Martyn album, like, say, One World.

she's told the 'dad wanted me to be a teen star' story in a lot of interviews but this one is the most detailed telling i've seen: https://pitchfork.com/thepitch/1482-big-thiefs-adrianne-lenker-has-seen-some-shit/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJdqBKDzl_4

this is the only song from her teen album on youtube but i think the rest of it is pretty easy to track down

I almost posted about the flute on No Reason yesterday. Yeah, so many great hits and pieces throughout.

the two extended breaks in "no reason" are so good, really transcendent stuff

richard hardy plays the flute on it, he's some old session guy who played on a lot of carole king albums in the 80s. he was apparently just playing flute in a lookout tower near the studio & they heard it and loved it and asked him to come play with them on "no reason"

I spent the last two days listening to everything in Lenker's catalog on Spotify, and every bit of it is good to great. I thought I didn't like the first two Big Thief albums but they're both awesome?

haha, yeah, after some of the posts above about preferring the first couple albums - which i totally get! - i listened to them again and found myself aching to come back to the new one

I've heard these guys on podcasts and in mixes before, but I wouldn't have thought to give the album a spin without this thread. It's amazing. "No Reason" is as good as anything I've heard in the past five years.

it must be the sauce!

that's my grandma!

whatsa gonna taaaaaaaaaaaaaake

"Change" too

god, i hope that i have the strength and patience and wisdom to not blow-up when, 40 years from now, i'm watching whatever television is and an ad comes on, and it's bbq ketchup ("original 1992 formula!") and then the jingle goes "whatsa gonnnnna taaaaaaaaaaake? (to ketchup?!), and it's such a bastardization of the original but I know that either the musicians or their families will get that money, and also that i'm confident that the bbq ketchup is pretty good because i trust big thief to at least approve of the product

Probably one of the better albums to feature a teddy bear’s butt on the cover, for sure

haha, yeah, after some of the posts above about preferring the first couple albums - which i totally get! - i listened to them again and found myself aching to come back to the new one

My entry point was U.F.O.F., and the other night I put on that and Two Hands — both of which I like a lot — and they already felt like precursors, not quite fully formed things.

man ... when's the last time we had a thread that was this universally positive about a new album? i realize there have been some ILM love-fests, but this is some kind of reaction.

big thief is for the people

big thief is people

“Love Love Love” feels underbaked to me, otherwise I’m having trouble finding anything or change about this album.

Was thinking last night that something I appreciate about this album is how Extremely Offline it is. I mean, there's one lyric about getting an internet signal. But otherwise it could've easily been made before the internet, before the exhausting digital spectacle of everything being beamed into my head for all waking hours. I feel like a lot of artists think they need to engage with The Discourse or Today's Issues in some way or another to make an important album, but they don't really do either of those things. And that's why it already feels timeless. It's just songs about people, nature, relationships, and potatoes played by people who just love making music together. After being stuck inside for a lot of the last couple of years and being sucked into an internet black-hole, it's been a reminder for me of the importance of all those things. I think that's partially why it feels like a wonderful breath of fresh air despite its deep roots in many parts of the folk/rock canon.

I’ll chime in. My wife recently moved to Savannah for a new job but I’m staying behind in Houston with the kids to finish out the school year. I downloaded this album while in Savannah, helping her get settled. It’s been the perfect music for all of this. Hopeful, melancholy, wide open. I can’t stop playing it

Was thinking last night that something I appreciate about this album is how Extremely Offline it is. I mean, there's one lyric about getting an internet signal. But otherwise it could've easily been made before the internet, before the exhausting digital spectacle of everything being beamed into my head for all waking hours. I feel like a lot of artists think they need to engage with The Discourse or Today's Issues in some way or another to make an important album, but they don't really do either of those things. And that's why it already feels timeless. It's just songs about people, nature, relationships, and potatoes played by people who just love making music together. After being stuck inside for a lot of the last couple of years and being sucked into an internet black-hole, it's been a reminder for me of the importance of all those things. I think that's partially why it feels like a wonderful breath of fresh air despite its deep roots in many parts of the folk/rock canon.

― triggercut, Thursday, February 17, 2022 10:43 PM (thirty minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

while I see this its the opposite feeling that excites me about it -- at some level it feels very of its time, that it only makes sense now, imho. its ironically anti-trend considering how trendy it is -- the fact that its 'working' is a tribute to how compelling it is, imho. like...2008 hipster fleetwood mac standom x NPR?? is how id describe its surface texture. but at this stage its effective in spite of those things not because of them

I didn't know spud was used as slang for potato anywhere outside of the UK until this album

"Like a feeling, like a flash
Like a fallen eyelash
On your sweater, threading future through the past"

XP same Nate Woolls, thought it was an orrible blood sausage expression

I'm all-in on the love for this but am surprised Whiney hasn't made a side-eye poll of the most gushing phrases.

Bring it on

I didn't know spud was used as slang for potato anywhere outside of the UK until this album

- at some level it feels very of its time, that it only makes sense now, imho. its ironically anti-trend considering how trendy it is -- the fact that its 'working' is a tribute to how compelling it is, imho. like...2008 hipster fleetwood mac standom x NPR??

otm

It couldn't exist outside this histori-musical moment, and, of course, as a culmination after six years.

And, yeah, what was the album that brought deej, me, Brad, Karl, tipsy, etc. together?

I didn't know spud was used as slang for potato anywhere outside of the UK until this album

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ad0w59lBfXU

Low I feel like gets pretty much universal acclaim on ILM but they have been around so long there's not the same enthusiasm as this

imagining a fourth verse of “spud infinity” in which lenker marvels that somebody so small could be so great at dunking

Song I woke up with in my head today: “Certainty.” Love that chorus.

Also, just in case REM hasn’t been mentioned somewhere in the list of influences here, they deserve a nod. Particularly Reckoning-Fables era. And some Lenker’s lyrics have a Stipeian allusiveness.