Big Thief - Two Hands

Handwringing over Big Thief like this is giving me flashbacks to Music Tumblr

if your guitarist is named buck, chances are he's pretty good, ex. big thief, blue öyster cult

the buckaroos

R.E.M.

10,000 Maniacs

i made a thread for masterpiece bc i heard the title track and "real love" and thought they were pretty tight and also at the time they were on saddle creek, who put out hop along's painted shut the year before. both bands felt special in a similar way. i'm def an unwitting victim of the pr machine

― american bradass (BradNelson), Tuesday, October 15, 2019 10:01 AM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

ha my old roommate was a super trad rock dude who had white stripes posters on our living room wall. He would play new rock sometimes & I mostly found it super boring. I got into the first Big Thief album bc it was the best thing he played to my ears -- was a little embarrassed for liking it at first bc it had some indie-pop perpetua vibes which has never been my aesthetic wheelhouse but her voice was distinct enough & there were some surprisingly good songs on it, esp for such a familiar aesthetic, and after a few times hearing it I started listening to it on my own

had no idea the band was going to broaden its sound like it did but it was such an organic discovery process for me its difficult to follow that tweet

i don't like what i have heard of the new album which is not a lot but i would never ever dare to say it is not good. that's a very patronising statement. it's more like my ears and eventually my brain do not seem to be made to appreciate it. but i liked large chunks of the album before.

I feel the same as you, voodoo chili. Myself, what keeps me from full-bore adoring these most recent two albums are the Extremely Strong Lyrics that I was hearing on Capacity which are largely absent

i do not perceive as much of a gap between the lyrics of capacity and the following two records as you do fgti, but i get where you're coming from. the songs on capacity feel like they all have this personal specificity and inwardly-searching quality, and together they end up touching on gender and power dynamics, family, presence and absence, scenes of horror and beauty lining up simultaneously without a sense of irony and more with a sense of this is just how things happen. ufof is much more mystical and outwardly-directed and about getting kissed by the flicker of a lake but songs like "from" and verses like "driving through the night / rings of crystal, crystal light / every gulp of the warm suburb air / betsy's auburn, auburn hair"... idk it's less specific but i'm still stunned and a little terrified. i do not have a grip on two hands lyrically at the moment; imo "shoulders" is a capacity-quality lyric but "shoulders" is as old as capacity is

in trying to make that post not horrible i ended up reading a lot of big thief lyrics and capacity's title track just has this perfect verse tucked away inside of it

Slipping away from the party
Totally vacant
Everyone gone from their bodies
You were outside kissing another
She was a friend of mine
I was surprised to discover
I wrapped my arms around her
She was a beautiful figure

also really love "evelyn's kiss was oxygen / i leaned over to take it in" from "shark smile"

shit doesn't even rhyme right

lyrics on UFOF were very hard for me to get a hold on (other than maybe From and Terminal Paradise). These already seem a little easier but still not as immediate as Capacity. I feel like she is very much not trying to write with the same level of immediacy though and is going for something more abstract and oblique.

shit doesn't even rhyme right

― Whiney G. Weingarten, Tuesday, October 15, 2019 12:35 PM (four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

oh no i take it all back

When she holds me in her jaw
All my blood dripping
Will I be free
To cease gripping?

is one that has been standing out for me so far

tell me i'm rare

When she holds me in her jaw
All my blood dripping
Will I be free
To cease gripping?

is one that has been standing out for me so far

― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive),

that's from "Wolf," right? It stood out in the car this morning, in part b/c there's nothing lupine about the arrangement.

capacity had beautiful, inward-facing lyrics that gave the quiet arrangements a steely intensity. UFOF had these super-intuitive, earwormy melodies that still pop into my head even though i haven't gone back and listened for a while. Two Hands, so far, is a more visceral listening experience with moments that show off just how tight these guys have become, but i'm feeling less emotional connection to the songs. there is still time for them to worm their way into my head like the last two albums did.

in about 20 years of seeing live music constantly, i can count on one finger the number of times i've seen a band perform a new song and have it immediately become my favorite of theirs. heck i've been all over the big thief threads obsessing over 'not' for about a year now.

preaching to the choir here, but this band is special

Yeah I felt that way when I saw her solo live, and also "From" became my favorite song of theirs for a while after just watching a video of it once. In fact, when I saw her live I enjoyed hearing the unfamiliar songs much more than the familiar ones, and when she played "Paul" it almost felt trite.

Listening to this album now... not quite what I expected (one way or another) for something that kicked up all this discourse, but it's good... I like the song "Not" a lot. Her singing, and some melodies, remind me a bit of Will Oldham.

Will Oldham is a good reference point, yeah. I really like Two Hands, I don't know if more than U.F.O.F., but not less in any case. Song for song, it may be stronger.

It's funny to me for Big Thief to get called out as indie darlings, because I've had an aversion to a lot of indie darlings — TVOTR, Arcade Fire, most of the Strokes and Animal Collective — but I don't feel that way at all about them. Obviously they are indie darlings by definition, 9.0 in Pitchfork and all, but I think that's mostly because they're a good, interesting band. They remind me of some things I like, Blonde Redhead was the first thing that came to mind in some places, but are their own distinct and odd entity. The interplay between the musicians is as interesting as the songwriting, they have a particular cohesiveness that reminds me of Sonic Youth or R.E.M. in their earlier years, when you can hear the whole unit really coming together and exploring what they can do.

i know it doesnt choogle in the same way, but i feel like the psych guitar solo freakout of "not" lives in the same neighborhood as "ramble tamble" by ccr

this record has so many classic rock touchstones which is kinda refreshing in 2019.

still on not which is a monster, but the way the drummer lets fills go past the first of the next measure beat feels v mick fleetwood. the major-minor switch is p beatlesly and shows up a lot. there's a lot of traditional i-iv and i-iv-v chord progressions which i dont recall them using as much on previous records. uh, the second song reminds me of tom petty for some reason? "wolf" sounds kinda fahey-ish to me. it's like there's familiarity but enough variation where it's not just a pastiche. i dont know if i like this as much as capacity of ufof yet, altho "not" is absolutely my fav song by them. there is so much mileage out of those three chords. (someone better at music theory feel free to correct me, im an amateur)

i hear so much Silkworm in it but I'm sure that is entirely coincidental

Silkworm was the first band I thought of when I heard the solo the first time.

Tim Midyett from Silkworm agrees, he tweeted this about "Not"

Missed the one after Masterpiece (so far), wasn't nuts about UFOF. Here once again tho...*very closely aligned* with my band's own jams and my overall preferences for a life in music, including the melody-wrecking coda (mmmmmwhah). So I love it

the solo is the most Andy Cohen thing i've ever heard that isn't Andy or Karl Hendricks. which is good, world needs more of it

there's a lot of traditional i-iv [...]chord progressions which i dont recall them using as much on previous records

'we have the same power, we have the same power'

love ufof now btw, will revisit this one once i've played it out

not that they’ve never used it ofc

So far the tracks I'm loving most are Rock and Sing, Those Girls, Shoulders, Not, Wolf. I love the way the album just opens on beat/full band with a lyric -- was thinking about starting a thread about "no intro" albums/songs that start like that.

I think the bassist is kind of the secret hero of this record -- there are some just gorgeous moments where the bass momentarily rises above the band and then plunges back down again into the mix, like the brief instrumental coda of Rock and Sing or the bass fills during the guitar solo on Not.

xxxpost - WITD thanks for sharing! that is cool he's into it and glad it just wasn't me

Hmm I sort of missed the boat on Silkworm and that makes me want to spend more time with their music

this all feels very arcade fire to me like the yr they broke through with a set of emotionally direct competent rock songs

just saw an advert for this album at London's busiest tube station, they've officially transcended the usual means of dissemination and gone Royal. this unfortunately means i have to view them with suspicion from now on

lj take a day of PTO no one can be that vigilant all the time

Big Thief already have a larger catalog of interesting songs than The Arcade Fire

TBF, a lot of people who’ve put out any music at all can claim that distinction.

I've been trying to figure out for a while what Buck Meek's stage movements remind me of, and I just realized it's those Chuck E Cheese animatronic bands

well, yeah

xp

Their performance of "Not" on Colbert last week was great: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWW-eKX8uSo

they are very good live!

I've been trying to figure out for a while what Buck Meek's stage movements remind me of, and I just realized it's those Chuck E Cheese animatronic bands

IDK why but that ganz tweet got under my skin and it keeps coming to mind. Something about a music critic at the paper of record just taking a big public dump on something I love, not even an artful takedown but just "this is bad and you are pretending to like it" with no further explanation.

good that I'm not on twitter

The entire “people are only pretending to like this because...” form of criticism is empty

Not defending that garbage tweet but it does happen sometimes.

xp -- not even so much as a "because" is part of what bothered me about it. Yes, it is possible for hype to take hold of a crowd and for something to sort of get overly pumped by that. Usually time erases that phenomenon. Honestly I feel like no one is more susceptible to it than music writers.

But also, no music writer really has any special ability to discern when it is happening to others around them.

Mostly men telling me I’m wrong! Love 2 tweet.

— cganz (@mehpatrol) October 15, 2019

*rolls eyes*

take comfort in the fact that "big thief is actually bad at making music" is such a wildly stupid thing to suggest that i would not really ever take this guy seriously no matter where he worked.