I'm kind of obsessive when it comes to music. In 2018, for example, I listened to each of Bob Dylan's studio albums, including some really awful ones from the '80s. After that came the Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen binges. But my musical interests have finally taken a contemporary turn: This year, I haven't been able to stop listening to Big Thief, an astonishingly prolific indie rock band led by singer-songwriter Adrianne Lenker.
Lenker has led a fascinating life. In her songs, she often references an older brother named Andrew, who her parents placed for adoption before she was born. When she was 4, her parents left the Christian cult she had been born into. When she was 5, a railroad spike fell on her head, nearly killing her. When she was 8, she wrote her first song.
Lenker didn't go to high school. She got her GED when she was 16, then went to Berklee College of Music on a scholarship. That's where she first met Buck Meek, the Big Thief guitarist who she happened to encounter in a bodega on the day she moved to New York after college. The story always reminds me of how Patti Smith describes meeting Robert Mapplethorpe on her first day in New York in Just Kids.
Lenker and Meek started playing music together and touring the country in a van. Like Smith and Mapplethorpe, they fell in love. They got married, then divorced. They're still fast friends, and they still make otherworldly music together, along with bandmates Max Oleartchik and James Krivchenia.
In 2019, Big Thief released two albums, UFOF and Two Hands. Lenker followed up with two haunting solo albums, Songs and Instrumentals, in 2020. This year, the group released a sprawling double album with a country flair, Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You. I saw a YouTube comment that said that these musicians perform each song like it's the last time they'll ever pick up an instrument, and it's true.
Some favorites: "Cattails," "Two Hands," "Ingydar," and "Red Moon." Check out the recent performance of their song "Certainty" on James Corden, and enjoy the weekend.
—Abigail Weinberg
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