Brent Hallenbeck
·5 min read
The post Big Thief Kick Off 2023 Tour in Vermont: Review, Photos, and Setlist appeared first on Consequence.
The first handful of songs Big Thief played Tuesday night (January 31st) at Higher Ground in South Burlington, Vermont — including “Certainty,” “Dried Roses” and “Cattails” — set a comfortable vibe that permeated the venue’s ballroom. That folk-fueled warmth was welcome on a 9-degree night, as the band kicked off its monthlong U.S. tour (grab tickets here).
That warmth grew into full-on heat about a third of the way through the 90-minute set. The crowd roared at the first notes of “Masterpiece,” the buoyant pop-rocker that provided the title for the band’s 2016 debut album, which was recorded just across Lake Champlain from Higher Ground in Essex, New York.
The brightness of “Masterpiece” segued into the dark, punchy rock of “Not,” with its staccato lyrics (“Not the crowd/ Not winning/ Not the planet/ Not spinning”) and the jagged, angry guitars of Adrianne Lenker and Buck Meek slashing with Neil Young-ish fury. Both songs hit hard, but with different approaches — a left hook here and a right uppercut there — and the night was no longer cozy and inviting. It was suddenly vicious and just a little scary, and that was all right, too.
That’s the beauty of what Big Thief has become in only a little more than six years and, prolifically, five albums. What started out as a sweet indie-folk-rock band led by Lenker’s rich lyrical insight has evolved into a multilayered powerhouse. Just give a listen to 2022’s Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You, with its 20 songs winding through fields of easy folk, percussive pop, jaunty bluegrass, jangly folk-rock and even flashes of trip hop and freewheeling New Orleans-flecked fun. The band smooths that blend like mortar between bricks, building a stout body of work.
Big Thief is also building a stout following. Tuesday’s show in a 770-capacity room will be followed in less than six months by a concert not quite 10 miles down the road on the grounds of the Shelburne Museum, an outdoor site with a capacity for 3,000 fans.
At Higher Ground, Lenker led the way with her rich lyrics that ask more questions than they answer, as on a new, untitled song the band played toward the end of its set (“Trying hard to figure it out here/ The center is a hole in the sphere”). Big Thief also played a beautiful version of the Dragon song “Sparrow,” which, with its dark imagery from nature and the Bible, evoked the apocalypse as much as it did the Garden of Eden.
Vocally, Lenker has that ability of rock singers who came before her — think PJ Harvey or Dolores O’Riordan — to go from peaceful to possessed without warning, giving a Big Thief show that extra bolt of lightning any memorable concert needs. Similarly, Meek’s guitar work jumps with ferocity and soothes with tenderness with equal skill. (He also played a lovely countrified opening set with his solo band.) Bass player Max Oleartchik and drummer James Krivchenia provide the power, giving moody, seemingly delicate songs like the mid-set “Terminal Paradise” the dramatic heft it lives on.
Lenker and the band mostly left the noisemaking to her singing voice and their instruments, saying very little to the crowd other than “hi” and “thank you” for the first hour, owing perhaps to not quite being at a mid-tour comfort level quite yet. “Thank you for being here. Make sure to drink water and slightly bend your knees,” she told the crowd in her first extended remarks, as if the audience needed to catch up to concert speed just as the band did.
The band loosened up with the crowd as the night grew late. Making good on the band’s early January promise to invite teachers and student to soundchecks, Lenker said a class of kindergarteners came to visit earlier in the day and presented the four with a toy dragon — possibly an homage to Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You — that she brandished victoriously from the stage.
The two-song encore consisted of a pair of songs from that latest album. The lovely, sparse “Change” gave the crowd the perfect sing-along almost-sendoff they were looking for. Then Lenker invited her brother, Noah, on stage to play jaw harp on the loosey-goosey bluegrassy “Spud Infinity.”
“What’s it gonna take/ To free the celestial body?” Lenker asks in that song, seemingly considering the freedom of a personal body more than an interplanetary one. Her question might be of the rhetorical variety. It might also be answered by attending a Big Thief show.
Big Thief next play New Haven, CT on Friday (February 3rd). Tickets for that show, and for the rest of the tour, are available here.
Setlist:
Certainty
Dried Roses
Forgotten Eyes
Cattails
Masterpiece
Not
Terminal Paradise
Sparrow
Simulation Swarm
Flower of Blood
Little Things
Happy With You
Vampire Empire
Unknown
Change
Spud Infinity
Big Thief Live Gallery:
Big Thief, photo by Luke Awtry
Big Thief, photo by Luke Awtry
Big Thief, photo by Luke Awtry
Big Thief, photo by Luke Awtry
Big Thief, photo by Luke Awtry
Big Thief, photo by Luke Awtry
Big Thief, photo by Luke Awtry
Big Thief, photo by Luke Awtry
Big Thief Kick Off 2023 Tour in Vermont: Review, Photos, and Setlist
Brent Hallenbeck
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