Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You
by Big Thief

From Mercury TOP 100 COMMENTER 02/13/2022 22:58 | #281270 | TOP COMMENT Vote up your preferred comments and the comments with the most votes will be flagged.

This album covers a lot. 20 songs. 81 minutes. A double album with all the hallmarks of a double album. It’s very rare for a double album to be fat-free and trimmed to just the highest quality stuff. And its rare for there to be cohesion and consistent flow for the duration of a double album. On the flip side, however, if you have a band or artist that is clicking on all cylinders and makes music that you love on a consistent basis, you can usually expect some real gems or even massive amounts of beauty when they go for broke and make an album such as this.

And all those things I just broadly said about long albums, applies also to this newest album from Big Thief. Its messy, its inconsistent, its gorgeous and its varied. All these things, while generally being BY FAR the loosest, most humourous and light hearted, most fun and least serious of all Big Thief or Lenker-related albums. This represents quite a huge shift in sound and style. Sure there are hints of albums past, and they do these more trodden styles in their arsenal justice. But it would be a bit of an undersell to say that this album takes sounds that are covered in all their previous albums only. They incorporate some of the soft folk sounds of solo Lenker and quieter Big Thief, and some of the intense and loud/anthemic folk ROCK sounds that you can hear on their debut, and you can find lots of times when the percussion work and the flow of the songs have a weirdness that made U.F.O.F so fascinating, and you will even find some country rock that you would expect to hear on a Buck Meek solo album… etc. All true. BUT also, you will hear snippets of a dozen other little things or major genres that you probably have not heard on a Big Thief, Buck Meek or Adrianne Lenker album in the past. This is all very exciting. The downside? Well, this album is by a mile the least consistent and cohesive of the 5 Big Thief albums thus far.

The highlights are numerous and also, like, way WAY high up there. The track most endearing and most on repeat in isolation for me is “Simulation Swarm”. That song has such a badass, rolling, momentum to it, is produced excellently and features some really cool instrumental breakdowns that are unique as hell. Other sick tracks of particular note are the 2 tracks that most exemplify the strangeness of Big Thief in their rhythms and instrumentals: “Time Escaping” and “Little Things”. Both those tracks are so rich with cool percussive flourishes, and they just work so well despite being utterly unique to the band. And of course, the warmth and reassurance of the simple opening folk track “ Change” is killer. The cosmic, silly and playful country rock of “Spud Infinity” is so damn charming and I love that slight break in Adrianne’s vocals when she is saying a particularly funny line. You can hear her having fun.

Oh and the title track is gorgeous and seems to be garnering loads of love from fans and listeners as being one of the more popular and respected tracks here. It’s dreamy, slightly psychedelic and it has a sort of Sufjan Stevens-esque floatiness which is fun to hear. Also the fact that the song’s title and, thus, the album’s title is directly taken from Lenker’s greatest moment “anything” from her 2020 songs album makes me love it even more. Although, to be honest when I saw the title and the connection to one of my favorite albums ever I will say I may have been hoping that this album and song would be more instantly transcendant. I perhaps got my hopes up too high.

Other great songs that I love here are the sweet and lovely “Certainty”, the infectiouslessly joyful country of “Red Moon”, the stark and austere beauty of “Sparrow” and “Dried Roses”, the way-too-short but pretty well done almost indietronica ( I think?) sound of “Heavy Bend”.

There are other good ones, but to be honest, I’m getting tired of describing the individual songs. The main point being that this album is packed with some stellar stuff. MOSTLY stellar stuff. The songs and the vibe isn’t held together, however. There isn’t a flow or momentum of note here for the whole album. Which is fine, its not like every album must have this, but it is a quality I love in LPs. There are also experiments and sounds here that just don’t work for me and somewhat fall flat. The sound of tracks “Love Love Love”, “Wake Me Up To Drive:, “Blurred View” and “Flower of Blood” just strike me as good ideas and perhaps with a either a bit more fleshing out or with a full cohesive album to explore these sounds, they could have been great and interesting. As it is, the beginning of track 9 after 8 tracks of consistent (yet still not exactly cohesive) excellence, the run of tracks from “Flower of Blood” through about track 15 “Promise Is A Pendulum” don’t strike me as great, and so the album loses steam.

Also, as great as “Simulation Swarm” and “Little Things” etc are… there is no all time favorite here. Not yet at least. “Coma” or “Mary” off their 2017 album, “Masterpiece” off their debut”, “Contact” or “UFOF” or “Forgotten Eyes” off their 2019 albums are all “HOLY SHIT” songs for me. Those are tracks that are so powerful and memorable and touching that I sometimes have a hard time getting them out of mind. Nothing, for me, like that here.

But what this album does have that no other Big Thief album has and something I ADORE and makes me very very forgiving for perhaps not having those special individual songs… is a atmosphere and a vibe of fun, of happiness. I don’t know what brought these 4 musicians to this sound and vibe, but I am super happy to hear Lenker and the gang sounding so damned un-fuckin-concerned with making some kind of deep masterpiece. They instead give off adventurous, almost off the cuff creative freedom energy here. After listening to their previous music, one thing I didn’t take away from Lenker in particular was an ease and a peace of mind. This album has that. While still tackling occasionally dark themes and sounds and occasionally getting quite cerebral, the band and Adrianne don’t sound quite so weighed down. This makes me happy. As a result, despite what I said about this album having flow or arc issues, there is a certain something that DOES tie this album together. Makes me feel like I’m just along for a fun ride, listening to subtly brilliant musical minds collaborate on all the songs they wanted to make for themselves.

So, I think I’ve gone on long enough. My overall feeling for this album is happiness. I am glad to have this Big Thief in my life. This will one I return to over the years and for sure my opinion will develop. For now after 3 full listens and a few songs listened to many times in the build up and in the time since they dropped the whole album, this is mid tier Big Thief. But it’s a unique Big Thief album within their discog. It’s fun and fascinating and gorgeous and it features Adrianne fuckin Lenker (the greatest American songwriter going?...maybe) and so a mid tier Big Thief is still a record I love. I will give this a 8.4/10

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Final Rankings of these 14 projects!

#1 - songs (2020) by Adrianne Lenker 10/10

#2 Capacity (2017) by Big Thief - 9.2/10
#3 A-Sides (2014) by Adrianne Lenker & Buck Meek - 8.9/10
#4 Masterpiece (2016) by Big Thief - 8.8/10
#5 U.F.O.F. (2019) by Big Thief - 8.6/10
#6 Dragon New Mountain I Believe In You (2022) by Big Thief – 8.4/10
#7 Two Hands (2019) by Big Thief - 8.1/10
#8 B-Sides (2014) by Adrianne Lenker & Buck Meek - 8.1/10
#9 Two Saviors (2021) by Buck Meek - 7.9
#10 abysskiss (2018) by Adrianne Lenker - 7.9/10
#11 Hours Were The Birds (2013) by Adrianne Lenker - 7.5/10
#12 Buck Meek (2018) by Buck Meek - 7.2/10

#13 Instrumentals (2020) by Adrianne Lenker - 6.5/10

#14 A New Found Relaxation (2020) by James Krivchenia - 6.1/10

From AvalancheGrips 02/16/2022 19:39 | #281394 | TOP COMMENT Vote up your preferred comments and the comments with the most votes will be flagged.

What a delightful album! This year is already shaping up to be a great one for music. I'm loving the vocals on this record, they're so quaint and inviting. I usually hate long albums but this one feels just right, it's not bloated and it doesn't drag on for one minute.

I’ve been slightly lukewarm about Big Thief since their debut which was stellar but this album blew me away. When I heard it was going to be so long I immediately lowered my expectations but I have NEVER seen anyone keep this level of quality up for this long of an album. Every song brings something to the table, the songs are perfectly balanced- unique enough to keep you from getting bored but similar enough that it all sounds cohesive. Overall just very impressed

A very ambitious project from Big Thief that shows a huge amount of potential but I don't think they have reached their absolute peak yet. You can see the group growing in quality through their albums and they just keep going up and up with this new release. This is primarily due to them being more comfortable with introducing more diverse and experimental instrumentation. This makes for a more rich, grand and in depth record that gives us so much to listen out for. A few examples of this are the use of the fiddle, piano, accordion and flute. Then there is the vast array of guitars used as well and the outstanding bass and percussion performance. They still have quite a lot of room to improve in this department but the slow introduction of more instrumentation is brilliant. The vocal is amazing throughout even though on a few tracks it takes a bit of time to get used to but it still blows me away once I have adjusted to it. It is an extremely unique voice and fits the style perfectly. There are also quite a few songs that can be picked out and be seen as phenomenal. However, the issue with this record is the elongated run time. It doesn't need to be an hour and 20 minutes and that makes the music feel so bloated. Also, the sound gets very repetitive by the time we reach the close of the record and I am ready for it to finish by about the 50 minute mark. Overall, a release that shows brilliant potential that should be realised on later releases but this still has some fantastic moments to enjoy. (Edited)

From Anti TOP 100 COMMENTER 02/13/2022 22:00 | #281269 | TOP COMMENT Vote up your preferred comments and the comments with the most votes will be flagged.

I thought its length was going to make this album a chore, but this is such an impressive opus. I attribute my enjoyment to the sonic variation. If it was 81 minutes of straight folk rock I would've gotten bored very quickly. There are some impressive stylistic changes on this record that make me excited for the band's future. Can't wait to see how this is followed up.