Graham Reid is an NZ journalist, author, broadcaster and arts educator. His website, Elsewhere, provides features and reports on music, film, travel and other cultural issues.
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Stealing away with Big Thief: What's not to get? Photo / Genesis Baez
Stealing away with Big Thief: What's not to get? Photo / Genesis Baez
Double Infinity
By Big Thief
Recently, plaintive postings have appeared on social media along the lines of “I don’t get Big Thief”. For some, New York’s Grammy-nominated alternative-folk band are problematic and maybe faltering: there was the loss of founder bassist Max Oleartchik from their commune-like collective, their careerblurred by solo albums, notably singer/writer Adrianne Lenker’s 2024 Bright Future, and they are difficult to define.
In the taxonomy of genres, the subspecies “alt-folk” is frayed at the edges by post-folk, alt-country and other spinoff styles.
On this sixth album, Big Thief drift into cosmic folk, Lenker drills down into personal relationships (on Happy with You, “Why do I need to explain myself?”) and at their most approachable, there’s the straight-ahead folk ballad All Night All Day – admittedly embellished by a whirly-gig of sounds – where Lenker’s heartbreaking vocal is central.
Incomprehensible arrives as an autobiographically detailed Beat-folk narrative of a road trip (“travelling with some stuff I left when I was a kid … the only thing I’ll keep are the letters and the photographs”) and thoughts of accepting ageing (“wrinkle like the river, sweeten like the dew”).
Los Angeles (opening with chatter and laughter) is an equally detailed, engrossing song of memory and the healing of a relationship.
The woozy sway and folksy rambunctiousness of Grandmother – with trance musician Laraaji, among others, on zither – talks about “turn it all into rock’n’roll”, although they don’t.
Big Thief are still up for challenging their audience: Happy with You finds Lenker repeating the phrase over and over above a surge of folk-rock with prominent bass; the pop-length, psychedelic Words comes with what sounds like disembodied voices looped behind her sweet vocal.
