Big Thief - UFOF

The Guardian 80

(4AD)
Hypnotic soft guitars mask uneasiness on the New York four-piece’s third album: it really packs a punch

Over the course of their previous two albums, New York foursome Big Thief pruned their meaty alt-rock back into mellow indie. UFOF sees them pare things down further still, in a collection of gentle folk that seems dazed by its own exquisite beauty. Sometimes, the results bring to mind a sugar-coated Elliott Smith: acutely lovely melodies are layered over beds of softly hypnotic guitar, the finger-picked figures gratifyingly soporific in their apparent capacity to continue for ever. At others, the band channel a kind of diluted, Americana-tinged pop, buoyed along by its own breathy charm.

The Guardian 80

(4AD)

Listening to Big Thief’s third album, UFOF (the second “F” standing for “friend”), it’s evident that it was informed more by where it was recorded – rural Washington state – than by the band’s Brooklyn home. These exquisitely rendered folk-based songs are for the most part hushed and gentle, while their elliptical lyrics reveal a fascination with nature and the great outdoors. Whether Adrianne Lenker is singing “Hound dogs crowing at the stars above/ Pigeons fall like snowflakes” or “See the luna moth cry/ Lime-green tears through the fruit bat’s eyes”, the fact her words are so infrequently rooted in contemporary urban life give the songs a timeless quality. Indeed, it does jar slightly when, on Betsy, she sings, “Drive into New York with me”.

The two standout moments are the delicately handpicked swell of Cattails, and Orange’s stripped-back despair and vulnerability, where Lenker comes across like a less-polarising Josephine Foster. But there is a richness of ideas throughout, from the opener Contact’s unexpectedly raucous coda and the lolloping, playful rhythm of Strange, to Terminal Paradise’s moving ruminations on death and Magic Dealer’s minimalist beauty. Full of subtle charm, it’s an album of deceptive depths in which to immerse yourself.