BeatRoute Magazine ON Edition - October 2019

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BIG
THIEF
k CONTINUED FROM PG. 7
physical inquiry. The two records,
nicknamed “the celestial twin” and
“the earth twin,” wonder about individuality
and collectivity in an
era marked by acute isolation and
helplessness.
If U.F.O.F. (Unidentified Flying
Object Friend) wanted to venture
into the cosmos to befriend “the
BIG THIEF
Wednesday, Oct. 16
Phoenix Concert Theatre
(Toronto)
Friday, Oct. 25
The Vogue Theatre
(Vancouver)
other,” then Two Hands redirects that gaze
earthward and inward. Two Hands is grounding:
“Maybe to realize that there is no other,
maybe to dissolve that feeling,” she says.
Lenker wrote fervently over the last two
years during two back-to-back world tours.
After a demo session in Topanga Canyon last
year resulted in 40 or 50 songs, the band realized
they enough for multiple records. But a
double album “would’ve been too dense, specifically
with this material,” Lenker explains.
“So we decided to make two albums.”
“[U.F.O.F.] started imaging as more ethereal,
celestial, and cosmic. [On Two Hands] we
wanted to be like bones and blood and very
human. It felt ambitious but it all made a lot of
sense once we got into it.”
Big Thief leaned on the opposing natural
environments of the Pacific Northwest rainforest
and the New Mexico desert to guide the
sonic differences between both albums. Their
U.F.O.F. sessions in the middle of a forest outside
Seattle “just flowed,” the lush greenery
and plentiful oxygen translating into the soft,
airy sounds on the album.
Less than a week later, the foursome evaporated
that fluidity under the scorching El
Paso sun. They grew “wily” in the 105-degree
weather. “We needed to shake off the desert
dust, to push through it.” They needed to fight.
Creating in such a hot and barren climate
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birthed songs that sound burnt to a
crisp. After a few failed sessions,
the band experimented by placing
their instruments as close together
as possible.
All but two songs feature live
vocal takes so that Lenker’s voice
hovers, suspended in the dry air,
clear and vulnerable. Krivchenia’s
muted percussions and Meek’s guitar are
evoke the feeling of cracked clay earth.
With Two Hands, Big Thief has tapped into
the vulnerability, immediacy, and universality
of the corporeal realm to craft an intensely political
record without using political language.
Lenker writes about the human body — the
most immediate and relatable thing — to bring
listeners into a shared sense of grief for our
disconnection to each other and to the earth,
while also pleading with us to refocus our energy
into our “immediate surroundings.”
“I think we can all feel the wounds of the
earth and the wounds we impose upon each
other. It’s very easy to distract from that feeling,
but if you’re really tuned in there’s just
this giant aching throbbing pain that anyone
could feel.”
For her, most pain is ancestral and inherited
by each generation but we still have agency to
change it by “working with that energy and
transforming it through many, many, many
acts of love over time.”
She wonders what would happen if everyone
poured love into themselves, worked on
their relationship with their grandmothers, and
“grew a little garden.”
“If everyone turned inwardly and worked
on that microcosm, we would then have a big,
beautiful peaceful macrocosm. It would just be
contagious.” ,
MICHAEL BUISHA
8 BEATROUTE OCTOBER 2019