Big Thief is back. The Brooklyn-by-way-of-Berklee indie-rock band released their first new music since their 2019 album Two Hands.
The single, “Little Things” is a skittering love letter that takes place in New York City. Singer-guitarist Adrianne Lenker encompasses that big/small duality in the way her voice whittles a declaration of love into a mumble: “The little things I like about you/ How you say when you say what you do.” The song was recorded with Shawn Everett at Five Star Studios last October and features one of the band’s most inventive arrangements yet.
“It’s in this sort of evolving free time signature where the beat is always changing, so Max [Oleartchik] and I were just flowing with it and guessing where the downbeats were, which gives the groove a really cool, light feeling,” said drummer James Krivchenia.
The other new song, “Sparrow,” is a gently strummed folk song that luxuriates in Lenker’s every tremble. The song is filled with rich, natural images punctuated by a steady beat. Krivchenia, who produced both of the new songs, said: “We all just scattered about the room without headphones, focused and in the music — you could feel that something special was happening. It was a funny instrumentation that had a really cool, natural arrangement chemistry — Max on piano, Buck [Meek] providing this dark ambiance, me on the floor tom and snare, and Adrianne in the middle of it with the acoustic and singing.”
Big Thief begins a U.S. tour on August 21st in Garden Grove, California, including stops at the Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago and Governors Ball Music Festival in New York City. Check out the rest of the dates below.
Listen to “Little Things” and “Sparrow” below:
Big Thief tour dates
Sat. Aug. 21 – Garden Grove, CA @ Garden Amphitheatre
Tue. Sept. 7 – Louisville, KY @ Headliners Music Hall *
Wed. Sept. 8 – Indianapolis, IN @ HI-FI – SOLD OUT *
Fri. Sept. 10 – Chicago, IL @ Pitchfork Music Festival
Sat. Sept. 11 – St. Louis, MO @ The Pageant *
Sun. Sept. 12 – Lawrence, KS @ Liberty Hall *
Tue. Sept. 14 – Dallas, TX @ Granada Theater ^
Wed. Sept. 15 – Austin, TX @ ACL Live at the Moody Theater ^
Fri. Sept. 17 – Houston, TX @ White Oak Music Hall Downstairs ^
Sat. Sept. 18 – New Orleans, LA @ Civic Theatre ^
Mon. Mon. Sept. 20 – Nashville, TN @ Ryman Auditorium *
Tue. Sept. 21 – Atlanta, GA @ The Eastern *
Wed. Sept. 22 – Raleigh, NC @ North Caroline Museum of Art +
Fri. Sept. 24 – Richmond, VA @ The National #
Sat. Sept. 25 – Queens, NY @ The Governors Ball Music Festival
Mon. Sept. 27 – Buffalo, NY @ Asbury Hall
Tue. Sept. 28 – South Burlington, VT @ Higher Ground – SOLD OUT #
Thu. Sept. 30 – Northampton, MA @ Pines Theatre – SOLD OUT %
Fri. Oct. 1 – Philadelphia, PA @ Union Transfer – SOLD OUT *
Sat. Oct. 2 -Philadelphia, PA @ Union Transfer – SOLD OUT *
Thu. June 9, 2022 – Barcelona, ES @ Primavera Sound
*with Mind Maintenance ^with Jimmy Stallings
#with Natural Information Society
+with Molly Sarlé
%with Alex G
‘with ELLA
