Unforgettable: The group Lucy Dacus called “one of the best bands ever”
There seems to be a lack of superlatives when it comes to the next wave of rock acts. Even though some artists are willing to put themselves on a pedestal when they want to, it seems that the greatest songsmiths of their generation are more content to keep things fairly lowkey when it comes to their masterpieces. Despite Lucy Dacus being one of the few people who manages to downplay their genius spectacularly, she said that Big Thief is still one of the best acts that she had ever seen.
When we’re talking about Dacus’s approach to music, though, we’re not talking about straight-ahead rock and roll. This is the kind of earnest singer-songwriter music that Joni Mitchell had built her career on, and some of the finest songwriters of this generation have taken that model and fleshed it out to the point where songs feel like emotional letters rather than lyrics.
While there have been a lot of songwriters between the 1970s and now, like Elliott Smith, Dacus seemed to capture something that feels indebted to the past and paving the way for the future at the same time. Despite all of the heartache found on The Record by Boygenius, there’s also a lot of harmony work that makes it sound like a long-lost Crosby, Stills, and Nash album.
For all of that posturing, Dacus is still firmly in the indie/alternative world, while Big Thief have taken the folksy side pretty seriously. Despite Adrienne Lenker being able to melt someone’s heart quite well on her own, hearing an album like UFOF is one of the most easygoing experiences you can have wearing headphones.
Instead of hitting you over the head with a message, Lenker seems to casually invite you in to listen to these muted discussions about the most emotional points in people’s lives. Dacus might have the ability to make songs that tug at one’s heartstrings, but she had to admit that listening to Big Thief left her in shambles on more than a few occasions.
Singling out the album Masterpiece as one of her favourites, Dacus said that Big Thief reduced her to an absolute mess playing live, telling Louder, “This came out the same year as [Dacus’ debut album] No Burden. We were kind of playing a lot of the same shows, and there are songs on that record that I’ll never forget hearing for the first time. I just think that they are one of the best bands ever. I’m never really more emotional than I am at a Big Thief show.”
What Big Thief capture whenever a play is something that no one can really fake: vulnerability. As much as people try to get an audience to relate to them for a few minutes while they play their little songs, it takes a certain amount of guts to make the kind of music that not only admits that you’re not perfect but also details the harshest points in your life for the world to see.
That kind of thing might feel exploitative for any artist to have to do, but Big Thief make the whole thing look easy. As opposed to the audience being a voyeur into Lenker’s melodrama, some of the group’s biggest songs are watching a finely crafted novel being told over the course of one album. And whenever Dacus takes to the stage either with her supergroup or solo, she seems to be mining for the same type of bravery that Big Thief do so naturally.
