'Two Hands' Captures Big Thief's Force And Intimacy

This week, Big Thief will release its second album of the year. The double play alone doesn't capture just how prolific this band is, though. Two Hands is the third Big Thief release in the past year and six days, if you count lead songwriter Adrianne Lenker's solo record, abysskiss. Broaden the count from there, and it is the fifth Big Thief-related LP of the past year and a half, including solo outings from guitarist Buck Meek and drummer James Krivchenia. Big Thief is like a hydrant with its top knocked off. Music is pouring from Big Thief.

The band released U.F.O.F., its first record of 2019, in May. That album was recorded in a converted barn in the woods of Washington state, and is the band's lushest work to date. It sounds misty and dark, a Northwestern transmission of twelve largely downtempo songs, layered with synthesizers and voices in the background. Lyrically, U.F.O.F. is filled with encounters with the unknown, the strange and distant: UFOs and other people. The band calls the record "the celestial twin." Two Hands is "the earth twin."

This twin business may sound like it's one step away from healing crystals, but as is often the case with Big Thief, look twice and the band is ontogazed skyward, is grounded. was drenched in distant reverbs, is dry and close. 's guitars were opalescent like the Pat Metheny records Lenker grew up on, ' guitars are sandpaper rough and searing. More than anything, though, captures the best of what makes the group's live shows so compelling – their force and immediacy, the unparalleled togetherness of their playing.