“Watering”: Big Thief’s most unsuspecting and overlooked song
There’s something eerily quiet about the haunting presence of trauma. As charred hearts and minds struggle to grasp the beauty of peace and freedom, the toxicity of the shadow always catches up, like a direct, intentional unravelling of the soul in the soft breeze of the night. Big Thief have many songs that tackle such ambiguities, but one lesser-known gem undeniably holds the torch for this endearing melancholy.
There are many criminally underrated songs on Capacity, like ‘Haley’, ‘Coma’, and ‘Mary’. ‘Haley’, in particular, is clearly one of the band’s most obvious demonstrations of everything that made them appealing in the first place, with Adrianne Lenker’s folkish, singer-songwriter charm sitting at the forefront of the song’s magnetic charm.
However, ‘Watering’ feels more subtle and unsuspecting in its beauty, starting with a more grounded, gritty guitar progression that starkly contrasts the rest of the tracks on the record. Now, for Big Thief fans who know, understand, and appreciate the importance of songs like ‘Watering’ among the rest of the tracks in their discography, it becomes clear that this essence of ambiguity isn’t their usual game.
In fact, ‘Watering’ is one of the creepier and more unsettling songs on offer here, with some claiming they find it difficult to even revisit despite its inherent gorgeousness. From the opening notes, it’s clear that we’re about to go somewhere gloomy, yet it remains uncertain what or where that might be until Lenker’s vocal hints at something far more sinister than we could have imagined.
“He followed me home again,” she sings, “And his eyes were watering / His eyes were watering like a child”. Written down, it’s difficult to note just how hard-hitting those words actually feel, especially when the story hints at an underlying tension with the next line, where Lenker claims to be “made-believe for him that my blood was dripping”, the intimacy of her voice standing in stark contrast to the danger in the words.
This is where Big Thief’s adeptness for sound dynamics comes into play, with distorted yet precise guitar explosions underscoring Lenker’s repetition of the word “screaming” before the arrangements soften again for the next verse. “He cut off my oxygen and my eyes were watering,” she sings, “As he tore into my skin like a lion / I knew it was poison as he filled me to the brim / And my blood was dripping like a lamb”.
As the intensity builds, it’s the cutthroat disposition of the next line that feels the most sobering: “Leave your bedroom light on / I love to watch you undress / And you know that I’m there.”
From those words alone, it’s easy to detect the layers to the narrative, with hints of toxic relationships and Stockholm Syndrome-esque situations that keep us coming back even when we know they’re bad for us. However, some point out that it may be even simpler than that, with Lenker singing about being stalked and harassed by a partner she longs to leave behind, whether physically or existing in the haunt of her own mind.
However, what elevates and enhances the entire emotional core of the track isn’t just its lyrics. In fact, they merely add meaning to an already evocative piece, with the atmospheres created mainly by Big Thief’s effortless knack for precision, even when the arrangements explode into something more spacious and explosive.
It’s soft yet hard, bleeding into consciousness with its own aura—like the delicate flicker of a bulb in the dark, persistent and impossible to ignore. Many of Big Thief’s songs explore life’s melancholic ambiguities, but ‘Watering’ feels like it ventures deeper, clinging to the mind like faded scars.
