If You’re a fan of indie music you’re probablywell familiar with popular band Big Thief. Consisting of Adrianne Lenker (Lead singer and Guitar), Buck Meek (guitar and backing vocals), James Krivchenia (drums) and Max Oleartchik (bass guitarist).
Starting their career in 2017, Big Thief has produced 5 albums and 8 singles. During this time and most recently the light has been shone on two songs in particular Vampire empire and Velvet Ring.
Due to getting mass amounts of views, parts of each of the songs have become easily recognisable as they continuously get played and replayed on social media, mainly TikTok. Each song takes on different versions of relationships. From toxic relationships where the woman has to beg for attention to a relationship where the man “isn’t the only one” yet tries to give his woman everything she wants, possibly in hopes of saving the relationship.
Lead singer Adrianne Lenker not only creates music with the band, but also has a solo career of her own. Which only begs the question, Is Adrianne Lenker’s solo career better and which music is better?
With a fanbase almost completely made up of teenage girls who not just want to experience life but live it, Big Thief has proven their ability to express complex scenarios, emotions, and thought. Through compiling a string of melodies and the strummings of a guitar, they make their fans relate to them on a heart healing level. Whether on purpose or as a consequence of their writing, Big Thiefs music has resonated with many people nationally.
When taking their acclaimed strongest albums it is easy to formulate an opinion. When comparing Adrianne Lenker’s solo album songs and Big Thief’s Album Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You I found it hard to decide which best depicted the artist and band as a whole. Ignoring this fact though, and just focusing on the albums themselves, I found that Big Thiefs album was clearly the better album. Although Adrianne Lenker has some strong singles on her album, with many having gained some popularity on social media, I don’t think that this fact outweighs the excellence and potential of Big Thief’s Album.
Overall Adrianne Lenker dives into topics like relationship issues, love, mental health, and yearning, in her album. With seemingly repeating instrumentals and rhythm’s, it felt like I was listening to the same song over and over again, just in different fonts. I do think Adrianne Lenker tackles these themes depicted in her songs very well anddisplays them beautifully through her music.
Singularly, the songs and music are good. Some songs are even great, but as a whole, the album lacks difference and the creativity that I saw in her album with her whole band. In no way do I think Adrianne Lenker is a bad artist or musician by any means, but I do not think that this album displayed the creativity that she had shown in much of her other music and the portfolio of this album was not diversified enough for me.
The best songs on songs is Zombie girl, not a lot, just forever, and half return. Many of the songs on this album have gained popularity on social media, for much of a goodreason. They’re, as I said, very good singularly. It is easy to take a 15 second clip from a song, obsess over it, and then let that cloud your judgement to then say that the artist is perfect and the whole album is amazing.
On this album, however, I didn’t like the songs come, ingydar, and dragon eyes. Seeing as two of these songs are towards the end of the album, it’s obvious that I got tired of the same and repeating sounds. I personally think that some of the instrumentals she chose did not go with her voice. But regardless her album songs isn’t bad.
The best songs on Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You are Sparrow, Wake Me up to Drive, and Simulation Swarm. In this album, Big Thief decided to shift between speed, themes, and intensity.
Mainly they focus on songs that start off slow and then shift into a chorus where Adrianne Lenker holds her notes while the guitar keeps playing in the background. To most similarly compare this album to albums like Stranger in the Alps (Deluxe Edition) By Phoebe Bridgers and Lush By Mitski.
As someone who likes indie music and music with different instrumentals as the artists try to express their creativity, I would say that this album is very good. Although there were a few
