“We need each other to survive”
JULY 2020 at Sam Evian’s Flying Cloud studio in the Catskill mountains. It’s only a few months since Big Thief’s world tour to promote their albums UFOF and Two Hands was dramatically curtailed by the coronavirus pandemic, with the band forced to play their final show in the street outside Copenhagen’s Vega concert hall before hightailing it back to America in a state of panic. While the rest of the western world stockpiles toilet roll and adjusts to working from home, Adrianne Lenker chooses to lock down in a remote one-room cabin in western Massachusetts, where – processing the heartbreak from her break-up with Australian singer-songwriter Indigo Sparke – she writes and records a pair of twin solo albums called simply Songs and Instrumentals. She also sends a series of songs in the form of voice memos to the rest of Big Thief, working to a new, mystical album title they’ve already decided upon: Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You.
At Flying Cloud, the songs keep coming, appearing to Lenker like “a wind blowing through” her. “Annie can just wake up from a dream and go play a song that was in the dream,” marvels Big Thief bassist Max Oleartchik. “I’m in awe about how quickly it happens.” One night, a huge thunderstorm knocks the power out. Sat around a candle on the kitchen table, the band can hear Lenker on the porch with her Martin acoustic, playing a song they’ve never heard before. Buck Meek is out there too, helping to mould it into shape, intuitively adding harmonies and second guitar part. “My certainty is wild, they sing.
