Big Thief - Two Hands

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.

lol and then to come back with "men tweeting," f this guy

Is that a gender-neutral use of 'guy'?

oh my bad, did not actually know who this person was

I mean it was mostly men telling her she was right too, but so pointless to even respond. Wouldn't care if it wasn't someone with that particular imprimatur.

Ugh, dudebros and their queer woman-fronted bands who sing about pansexuality and gender anormativity, amirite

lol. the worst

That Colbert performance is good (the drummer = a Brett Gelman character)

theres def bands driven by media hype but this isnt one of them...media is at best keeping up w/ the irl buzz and at worst slightly behind

first album still the best imo

I forgot to mention there was a jammy segue in the live show that made me think of Jandek!

i'm not super into this band (haven't been all along) BUT that is a very good song and that video up there is a great performance that really lets you see how each member of that band has a sort of weird, wild-eyed, slightly unsettling quality that you can't take your eyes off of. (Lenker the least so, but she is the focal point, so...)

they're like a band full of the guy in the corner of the bus station that is making a harmless scene and you're keeping an eye on him without looking his way. i mean this in a very complimentary way, of course.

The band's look in that clip reminds me of the end of The Apple, when BIM shows up at the park w/Mr. Boogalow, sporting a "new style"... don't even think about @'ing me

the difference between "not liking something" and "something not being good" and I argue this band is not good. People love what they love. I'm just making a critical statement and a social observation. Obv. fallacy of "objectivity," but she could make a possibly persuasive or significant case, just prob not on Twitter---where so many people (incl. me at times) think they're masters of the mic-drop maxim, and the more insistent they are, the more loaded the lines, the less likely it is to worke.
However! When she says that it's mostly guys telling her she's wrong, that is more significant: a friend quoted his w!fe as saying, when asked (not bothering to volunteer an opinion on a then-celebrated singer-songwriter, I forget who) that she was okay, though very "womany"--projecting this ingratiating, sympathy-seeking image, brave and thoughtful, confiding her experiences, brave and tendah---well, and also the early rock critic Ellen Willis, while professionally and personally immersed in the Janis Joplin experience, especially live, came to wonder, as she stood near guys also immersed, if the theatricality, the sonic baptizm, which could be pretty strenuous for all concerned, especially when Joplin was still with Big Brother, if all this Story of the Pain and Glory of Womanhood, waw not somehow making it too easy for guys, with another far-out rock spectacle, throw yer popcorn in the air (well, the breakthrough album was Cheap Thrills--wonder how Joplin, no dummy would have dealt with this if she had lived longer, like well into the 70s wave of feminism)
But I can only say, I've got a simple male mind, and I like what I like.

you can't apply either of those descriptions to this band, they're not courting the gaze of the male counterculture