Spectreview: Big Thief – Two Hands

-FUCHSIA PINK-

For a guide to the review color rating system, click here.

“I am that naked thing swimming in air
Why does that mean anything?
Why do you stare?”

When Big Thief took the stage on Colbert’s Late Show to perform “Not,” the searing climax of their second album of 2019, they could not have made a better claim for their status as one of rock’s strongest contemporary acts. It’s not just Adrienne Lenker’s quiet intensity, it’s the bolts of energy sparking between each individual band member, how they don’t seem to be playing for anybody other than themselves. This is a band: a group of people that visually lives and breathes the music they play. They seem less concerned with the optics of the end result than with the joy of performing itself. No vying for attention, just happiness in being together and on the same page. How many TV spots like that have we seen this year?

If May’s U.F.O.F. filled in the cracks of the band’s impassioned folk-rock with ethereal abstraction, Two Hands returns to the earthbound subjects of the band’s first two albums, albeit with a newfound grandiosity. If Lenker once again concerns herself with the intertwining of flesh and blood, she does so expansively, shunting the named subjects of her previous songs and instead drawing from classic folk motifs -nature, animals, body parts, landscapes- to buff out the edges of her love stories. She’s still giving us all of herself in every vocal crack and rush of emotion, but the laser-focused character studies of Masterpiece and Capacity are now painted with ambiguous language, the details fuzzy like charcoal rubs of gravestones. Besides “Forgotten Eyes’” lamentations to the plight of the homeless and “The Toy’s” fears of a collective death, Lenker directs her words to an ever-shifting “you” and the blanks appear, to then be filled by the listener. Over and over, the love she finds provides no sense of completion besides the temporary relief of loneliness, and loss is the other side of the coin, as much a part of the package as the tenderness of the initial embrace. This is Folk Rock 101, and it’s present in the unflinching tragedy of “Shoulders” and the bait-and-switch of the Nick Drake-like “Wolf,” tracks that showcase how well Big Thief understand the unspooling quality of a good folk song. What helps Two Hands ascend from the pack, and provides the strongest link to U.F.O.F., is the futility of specifying the nameless. There is no solution presented in “Not,” no one destination that provides every answer or unlocks the key to happiness: just a whole lot of searching, and the meaning hidden in that search. What mysteries we stumble upon are not demanding to be solved; what pain we endure is to be embraced as tightly as a lover. That climax, when framed within the record’s numerous make Two Hands a brilliant restructuring of U.F.O.F’s key points and a solid deconstruction of folk rock’s most iconic arguments.

The band (and producer Andrew Sarlo) gamely follow, caking her words in trodden dirt and leaves. James Krivchenia’s signature snare intrusions are even grittier, Buck Meek winds licks around Lenker’s syncopated guitar melodies like vines around a tree, and Max Oleartchik’s bass exudes a hearty warmth. Unlike the spellbinding silence blanketing U.F.O.F., a notable crackle of hiss separates each song here, keeping the listener in the confines of the recording space. The band feels closer to the ears, and even the spaciest numbers carry an incredibly warm, earthly presence. Compare the equally glacial closing tracks of this record and its supposed twin: where “Magic Dealer” felt weightless enough to naturally devolve into enigmatic ambience, “Cut My Hair” resonates with the warmth of a campfire and ends in that constant hiss, the purposeful inclusion of inactivity. Nothing’s here that’s not directly provided by the live-playing four-piece: no outside field recordings, no keyboard overdubs or violin strings, no artfully-placed outtakes or false starts. It may not break as much ground as its predecessor, and it may make Two Hands less of a heady accomplishment, but it show how the band can succeed on the genre’s eponymous terms. Just four people in a room making music, sharing one sound and one tongue: there’s arguably nothing more human than that.

Highly recommended for sitting alone in front of the fireplace.