It’s a song about absence, in which Lenker tries to define something by what it is not. Great on record, hair-raising live, Not is a revelation, worth the price of admission alone. “She has the poison inside her! She talks to snakes and they guide her!” seethes Lenker in character as Adam, a figure whose distress is probably accusation, but could be concern. The encore is Sparrow, from Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You, a double album released last month, in which the biblical Eve takes centre stage. When Big Thief truly power up, it’s a privilege to be proved so wrong about them. ‘An awkward bunch who love roots music’: Big Thief at Shepherd’s Bush Empire. Oleartchik often plays on one knee throughout the gig, he will wander away from his amp and sit or crouch on the stage in, against all odds, an unaffected manner. He spends most of the evening on the balls of his feet, using the space, making everything sing as though by osmosis.
#Who sings thief in the night series
On Change, mercurial guitarist Meek doesn’t so much play a solo as sprinkle beatific notes around with a series of birdlike twitches. What was shruggy on record comes to vivid, pulsating life. Tonight, though, it swiftly becomes apparent that Big Thief are extraordinary, albeit in bursts. When Big Thief attempt something lighthearted, they end up with a strange song about potatoes – Spud Infinity, which unsuccessfully rhymes “knish” with “finish”. Take Max Oleartchik, whose tasselled bass, moustache and pigtails ensemble tonight hint at time spent near drumming circles. Group therapy has been key.īut for all this, Big Thief can sometimes present as overearnest, hippy-ish North Americans with little quality control. When Big Thief truly power up, it’s a privilege to be proved so wrong about themĪs a unit, Big Thief have also overcome a vast existential threat – not Covid, but the divorce of their founding partnership, Lenker and Meek, a conscious uncoupling that has seen both parties survive, meet other people and break up with some of them, with band members releasing several solo albums and yet remaining committed to their “magical” joint project. And in guitarist Buck Meek, Big Thief also have a musician so admired he skipped several grades of dues-paying and landed the plum spot in Bob Dylan’s acclaimed Shadow Kingdom live stream band of last year. There are parallels here with other singular voices, like Sufjan Stevens, or Hurray for the Riff Raff’s Alynda Segarra. In Lenker, they have an heroic frontperson who, tonight, sports a number two buzzcut, whose childhood experiences in a religious cult and fluid sexuality have informed her band’s work.
They are a band you absolutely want to love – female-fronted, searching and sensitive, organically grown, tackling themes like the infinite as well as confessionals about love and loss. And so it proves tonight, for a few songs.
Much of Big Thief’s sprawling recorded output has long seemed pleasant, if a little worthy and unfocused – folk-rock, or thereabouts, that pairs singer and guitarist Adrianne Lenker’s oblique lyrics with intelligent, interlocking contributions from the rest of the band that can often take a few listens to bed in.
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