Tag Archives: big thief

#945: Big Thief – Not

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When Adrianne Lenker was touring for her solo 2018 album, Abysskiss, ‘Not’ was a track that she would bring out from time-to-time during some of her performances. It seemed to be the one that stuck out the most out of the newer material she would play, which got the inevitable question rolling: “When are we gonna hear a studio version of this?” Well, it wouldn’t be on the next Big Thief album. But there was great excitement when another album by the band was announced for release not to soon afterwards, coming as a surprise to everyone, and included ‘Not’ in the tracklist with a runtime of six minutes and seven seconds.

So what is ‘Not’ about? Well, it’s about the things that “it” is not. What “it” is exactly isn’t revealed in the song. But one thing’s for sure, “it” is definitely not any of the things that Lenker lists throughout. Lyrically, the song is genuinely one of a kind. Never heard a track that took an angle quite like this one. But I think what grabs everyone the most is the tight band performance and just its intensity overall. The song’s already in a minor key which sets things off with an uneasy feeling, like something’s amiss and not quite right. The feeling simmers with Lenker on guitar on the left, Max Oleartchik and James Krivchenia on bass and drums respectively, during the first verse, then Buck Meek enters on the right midway though with these eerie sustaining notes that add to the creepiness of it all. Backing vocals come in for the choruses to add some progression before everything returns to the form of the first verse.

Things take a more ominous turn about two minutes in when the guitars drop out of the mix leaving just the vocals and the rhythm section before they exploding back in again alongside a growl from a Lenker. Her vocals grow more impassioned, transitioning from yells to full-blown screams before the track takes another turn and dedicates itself to a ripping guitar solo from Lenker that lasts for almost half the track. It has to end at some point, but even when it does reach that conclusion it doesn’t sound like the band were ready to stop. At live performances the track can go on for more than eight minutes just because people appreciate the solo so much. Though it has to be said that it’s a hell of a way to cap off one of Big Thief’s strongest moments put on tape. I think I might prefer other Big Thief songs to this one. But I’m very sure that for a while when Two Hands had been digested and discussed, it was quietly agreed that ‘Not’ was the band’s best song by a mile or two.

#665: Big Thief – Jenni

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It seems that ‘Jenni’ is not available on YouTube to listen to, neither as its studio recording nor a live performance. I’m sure not everyone who reads this uses Spotify; I do, so that’s how I’ve linked it above. Sorry to those who don’t use it.*

Big Thief are probably my favourite band at the moment. It’s quite lucky that I only started listening to them at the beginning of this year and since then the group has released two great albums, both of which I can’t shake off, and have continued The first of them, U.F.O.F., was released in May. Two Hands followed over a month ago. I’ve witnessed comparisons between the two, as there were guaranteed to be some, and have seen that many people – by ‘many’ I mean a few comments on the Indieheads subreddit – seem to prefer Two Hands. I’m still listening to the songs from U.F.O.F. quite frequently though. While Two Hands is raw and quite naked in its production, the fullness and warm tones of its predecessor always get me going. I have a thing for chilled out, laid-back albums.

I was in a state between slumber and wakefulness when listening to U.F.O.F. for the first time on its release date and distinctly remember hearing ‘Jenni’, thinking how sort of heavy it was in comparison to the other eleven tracks on there. A millisecond fake-out clip begins the track, but when that first hit of the bass drum comes in with the guitars for the actual starting point it was like no moment of any other. On ‘Jenni’, it really sounds like the band were just in a large room and feeding off each other to produce this slow burning energy.

Unlike the majority of other songs on the album ‘Jenni’ has moments where the band just freak out, allowing moments of guitar feedback to ring out and rampant string bends to dominate the sound. Snippets of backwards cymbals glitch in and out of the mix as a swirling wall of sound reveals itself during the choruses. There are these brief occasions of dissonance during the verses that can add a speck of creepiness to the overall tone, but it resolves itself in the beautiful release of each chorus where songwriter Adrianne Lenker sings the track’s main refrain.

Who ‘Jenni’ is is a mystery, the answer to which only Lenker probably knows. The lyrics don’t leave much to try and pick out. Despite their simplicity, they’re still evoke vivid imagery of what is being described in each verse. The narrator – probably nervous, having a panic attack, unable to sleep, could be anything – sees Jenni – a friend, relative, spirit(?) – who then relieves the narrator from its anxious state by taking it through a mystical portal to an unknown destination. It’s like a strange, and very short, children’s story where what is occurring in the song is much darker than how it’s read.

This song is at the top of my ‘On Repeat’ playlist of ‘songs I can’t get enough of’ on Spotify right now. Everytime I hear it it’s like I’m sinking into my chair or whatever I’m comfortably positioned in at the time. A definite highlight, for me, from an album that I can’t stop listening to.

*At the time of writing this the song was not available on YouTube. That changed not too shortly after.