Folk-rock: the genre that infuses you with enough wanderlust and adventure to get you through the two-hour drive to your family friend's cabin in the woods, and just enough to inspire you through the four-mile semi-scenic forest hike thereafter. Or, as my dad prefers to identify it, "The Lumineers + tailcoat riders". Compared to other mainstream music filled with a predominantly young artist base who grew up fumbling through "Riptide" on the ukelele, it's a genre that, while undeniably possessing gems, tends to suffer from excess fat. In a modern folk scene that can make one feel like your conservative grandma commenting on the outfit you chose ("My goodness, leave some to the imagination!"), it's the rare and precious band that can synthesize the best of the soul-bearing, flannel-wearing wailer on a rustic stool musical genre with traditional chamber folk elegance. Big Thief, an active indie band that got their start in 2016 and is ascending higher and higher into the echelons of indie music infamy, manages to create music that is soul-bearing enough to be raw and intimate, but not so much as to forgo the mystery that trademarks many traditional folk mainstays.

 

The release of the Brooklyn band's 5th album "Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You" - a 20-track study on brevity and economical punch - was the first album of theirs to truly enter the folk-rock mainstream, a grand synthesis of the self-liberating instrumentals and poetic liberty they'd been working towards since 2016 with their debut album "Masterpiece." As a fan so arduous in my devotion that in 2023 I made it to the top .005% of their Spotify listeners, I'm overjoyed that they've been feeling the love incrementally more from casual indie music listeners (more unemployed indie fans have been familiar with their work for longer). In anticipation of their freshly announced album "Double Infinity," which is to drop in September of 2025, I've created an 8-song starter kit for those just entering the Big Thief universe, with a mix of tried-and-true classics as well as some underground picks that are sure to have you in love with them just in time for the newest album release. Click on the album to read more.