“Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You” by Big Thief: Album Review
BIG THIEF’S NEWEST RECORD IS EPIC WHILE INTIMATE, AND COURAGEOUS IN THE FACE OF DEEP LONELINESS
Big Thief’s newest record, Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You, is epic while intimate, and courageous in the face of deep loneliness. It’s the most instrumentally-varied record the band has ever recorded, but also the band’s most consistent beginning to end. Not a single song feels out of place, leaping and bounding between earnest acoustic folk, electric rock riffs that sound like chainsaws, and accordions playing alongside drum machines. Adrianne Lenker, the group’s lead songwriter, returns to familiar themes she’s explored in the past: family, community, identity, and loss. Lenker has never stopped exploring these themes, because as she’s said before, they’ll never finish being explored.
Highlights of the record include “Time Escaping,” a frenetic trailblaze through stanzas of vivid word pairings that I don’t think listeners are supposed to understand immediately from the first listen. One of Lenker’s greatest strengths as a wordsmith has always been her ability to write such specific and carefully-crafted passages that appear as a puzzle when read on paper, with their meaning and intent shining through elegantly vis-à-vis the medium of recorded sound. Other highlights on the record include “Red Moon,” a pining for the peace and community of the country, “12,000 Lines”, a ballad about a restless Lenker waiting for an unrequited love to reach out to her, and “Blue Lightning,” a howling wishlist of all the things Lenker believes would spiritually fulfill her.
The 20-track record was produced by Big Thief’s long-time drummer James Krivchenia, and is another encapsulating addition to the band’s flawless discography. There is no one currently alive writing music as magical and true to the human spirit as Adrianne Lenker. Her commitment to using music as a means to traverse her own thoughts on deep, universal themes like humanity and spiritual exploration has acted as a mirror for thousands of listeners who feel the same things she does. We learn more about ourselves when we listen to Lenker sing, and we look into ourselves more often because she makes it easier to do.