Over the course of Big Thief’s career, the indie-folk band has mostly relied on a simple musical palette. But on their fifth album, Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You, they embrace a wider array of influences than ever before, including Americana and noise rock. The result is a sprawling double album that finds expressive power in its scope and experimentation, though there are almost as many misses as there are hits.
From the incorporation of fiddle to Adrienne Lenker’s elongated vocal runs, songs like “Spud Infinity” and “Red Moon” are steeped in the sounds of country music. Similarly, “Little Things” evokes ’90s jangle pop in the vein of the Sundays, Lenker’s voice growing more desperate and feverish as the track builds toward a beautifully minimalistic guitar solo.
Indeed, as on 2019’s Two Hands, Big Thief’s sonic calling cards are Lenker’s idiosyncratic voice and enigmatic lyrics, which tackle themes of isolation, the natural world, and fracturing relationships. The band’s songs have often emphasized intimacy, both musically and lyrically, and Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You poignantly reflects on how enthralling intimacy itself can be, with all of the anxieties and contradictions that come with it.
On “Blurred View” and the title track, Big Thief creates emotion through atmosphere. Lenker’s voice is subtly distorted on the former, mirroring the song’s pained reflections on desperation and loneliness. In other instances, the band stretches out the length of a song in order to maximize its emotional potency. “Sparrow” hardly develops beyond its initial melody over the course of its five-minute runtime, but coupled with Lenker’s oblique, gut-wrenching meditation on betrayal, the song unfurls spectacularly with each passing minute.
Conversely, the one-and-a-half-minute “Heavy Bend” barely has time to develop a hook before it abruptly cuts off, feeling like an unfinished sketch of a song, while an off-kilter rhythm, repetitive chorus, and copious reverb together turn “Wake Me Up to Drive” into a soup of musical parts that don’t necessarily cohere. Though competently written and performed, tracks like “Changes,” “Dried Roses,” and “Certainty” don’t have much of a distinguishing sonic identity at all, largely relying on Lenker’s voice to distinguish them.
As is frequently the case with double albums, the question arises of whether the quality and scope of the songs justify the runtime. The answer here is, mostly, yes. Despite tracks that feel unfinished or experiments gone awry, Big Thief’s artistic vision is more diverse and fully realized on Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You than on any of their past releases.
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