Two Hands
by Big Thief

From LebowskiRams TOP 100 COMMENTER 10/14/2019 19:33 | #243745 | TOP COMMENT Vote up your preferred comments and the comments with the most votes will be flagged.

U.F.O.F was alright. This is excellent.

"Not" is in the running for song of the year.

From HoldenM TOP 100 COMMENTER 10/11/2019 20:21 | #243662 | TOP COMMENT Vote up your preferred comments and the comments with the most votes will be flagged.

Here's the pitch for this album: "What if we didn't sound like we just got out of bed?" At any rate, this is another terrific collection of songs. Big Thief is really stealing my heart this year.

From Mercury TOP 100 COMMENTER 02/11/2022 18:11 | #281127 | TOP COMMENT Vote up your preferred comments and the comments with the most votes will be flagged.

This is, for me, the least engaging of the Big Thief LPs so far. That is to say while I still quite like it and find the sounds consistently gorgeous and beautiful and all that, this album has far fewer of those moments where my breathe is taken away by the grandness or the beauty of the songs.

The standouts here are the quite uplifting and beautiful “Forgotten Eyes” which has one of my favorite lines “Forgotten tongue is the language of love”. Also this album’s stand out track and the most famous Big Thief track yet “Not” is a passionate and really uniquely structured rocker with a super rewarding and explosive end. Also the title track here is a beautiful and moody and soulful bit of Big Thief/Adrianne magic.

The album flows nicely and the songs are never bad and actually this whole album strikes me as perhaps the least emotionally fragile or down of the Lenker or Big Thief I’ve heard. This is the sound of a band getting on well and absolutely bursting with song ideas and coming together to pull it all off. As a result this is a very loose and joyful album especially by their standards. There is a love and hope present in this album (with obviously still a lot of Lenker’s dark, abstract and emotionally torn themes mixed in).

There is no equal to “Coma” here, nor “Contact”, nor “Masterpiece” and as a result for me this is a beautiful batch of B-B+ songs with no obvious A+ classic. Makes for an album that I can sink into and feel right at home enjoying one of my favorite bands of all time (its safe to say that now that I have explored their work so much) doing those special things they do best. The bass work and drumming and production and the subtly unorthodox songwriting techniques are all here and this is still top tier folk and indie rock, just by their standard I think this is the least loved of their records (note: still LOVED).

This gets a 8.1/10

From Brad1770 TOP 100 COMMENTER 12/15/2019 10:44 | #245703 | TOP COMMENT Vote up your preferred comments and the comments with the most votes will be flagged.

I’ve been a huge fan of these guys since their debut ‘Masterpiece ‘ back in 2016 and I can confidently say this is their most accomplished album to date

Recorded pretty much live and with minimal takes in a studio out in the desert near the Mexico border , the album was actually recorded way back in June 2018 . The album feels live and boy does it sound great , tracks such as “Shoulders “ , “ Not” and “Forgotten “ simply smoking through the headphones

2019’s ‘U.F.O.F’ was good but far from great as it sounded more like an Adrianne Lenker solo album, but this album is Big Thief as a collective unit doing what they do best

Only beaten out by Lana Del Rey’s masterpiece for best album in 2019

Love this band, adore this album

From lleon79 TOP 100 COMMENTER 06/23/2022 03:01 | #286607 | TOP COMMENT Vote up your preferred comments and the comments with the most votes will be flagged.

I've been listening to all of the Big Thief albums after falling in love with "Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You". I tried in the past to like this band to no avail. Now I might say they are becoming one of my favorite acts! "U.F.O.F.", which I previously didn't really like, finally clicked more with me. "Capacity" and "Masterpiece" are filled with incredible cuts. Maybe it is because I've been listening to a lot of Big Thief lately, but this being the last one I came around to, I found it pretty derivative, but still, "Shoulders" is a standout, and "Not" is a truly spectacular song.