Big Thief - Horsepower

30-song triple album out next spring!

Been listening to the tracks I didn't know off of ufo's playlist. So much awesome. Spatchcock Chickenshit Bingo!

i hope "casual touch" is going to be the first single, it's one of my favourites out of the songs we've heard. i'm also really glad we're finally getting a studio version of "happiness", that's been floating around for ages now and is a really lovely tune. a new version of "born for loving you" should be welcome too, the existing recording is a bit lacking in energy?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odPUaaNmGew

"21" (not in the playlist) is the first song here. it was the first song adrianne & buck wrote together, over a decade ago

Thank you! A convenient Audacity-snip and iInto the folder it goes.

I haven't spent that much time with Adrianne's Bright Future yet -- played "Sadness as a Gift" something like 15 times today. A song & recording worthy of Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You! Totally looking forward to the "Big Thief in Nashville" edition.

GOAT indie rock band

A friend who was also at the Nashville show had a good word for Lenker — "disarming." She's much too self-confident to call her self-effacing, but she's content to let her art kind of sneak up on you. She has such an open, friendly presence onstage — at least the two times I've seen her — and with the band, she's seemingly instinctively averse to hogging attention while also very clearly serving as the leader. When I wrote about Double Infinity I called her "low-key one of the best songwriters of her generation," and nothing about the newer material makes me rethink that. What a talent.

A triple album seems excessive but love them to death so looking very forward to it.

the important bit the op forgot to mention is that this is their full-on nashville country album with fiddle, pedal steel and banjo all over it. iris dement (who sings lead for a verse of "where will we go"), gillian welch, lucinda williams and rodney crowell all seem to be on it

i'm not really expecting a whole album of the country songs from dragon new warm mountain though, there's a fair bit of variety across the 2/3rds of the album we've heard them play live, from fingerpicked folk songs to neil young-esque country rock to whatever "spatchcock chickenshit bingo" is

i'm completely fine with them putting out double or triple albums regularly if that's what they have to do to keep up with how prolific adrianne is as a songwriter, they're so consistently good

triple album? are they autechre now?

The more I think about it, the happier I am about the news that they leaned in to the country/pedal steel/pretty harmonies etc approach for this one. The more lightly arranged, quieter stuff is generally what I lean hardest toward on Diamond. And now 30 songs' worth of THAT?! Too good!

er, on *Dragon

https://www.instagram.com/p/DcmSCtvAT6h

letter from adrianne on the new album, among other things she says bill frisell and mickey raphael are on the album too

Could you copy & paste the text into the thread for me, ufo? I'm down a VPN at the minute.

What a guestlist.

On Saturday & Sunday, August 22nd & 23rd we got to play at the Ryman Auditorium with some of our favorite musicians on earth. Buck, James and I were joined by Joshua Crumbly, who we've been touring and recording with for the last couple of years, along with nine other special guests: Richard Bowden, Rodney Crowell, Iris Dement, Greg Leisz, Russ Pahl, Hannah Read, Zosha Warpeha, Gillian Welch, and Lucinda Williams. (listed in last name alphabetical order)

I've been struggling to find the words to express the gratitude I feel for the time, care and energy that these folks have given to this batch of 29 Big Thief songs from our three weeks of recording together last May through preparing for these shows and then taking the stage with us this past weekend, in that sacred room where the walls are alive with nearly a century of songs, probably more if you count from when it was a church. To be gathered there together in devotion to the craft of play, to be playing shoulder to shoulder, melding frequencies in mid-air whole-heartedly, moving with one pulse. To be enveloped in the vibration of strings and drums and voices. To be believed in by our heroes and trusted by our audience. To be there together is a gift so deep it blows me away. This gratitude is infinite and these moments with be with me the rest of my life.

Additionally, I would like to thank Bill Frisell and Mickey Raphael, who couldn't make it to the shows, but were with us in spirit, and who contributed greatly to the record.

This band is a powerful engine with a whole lotta Horsepower! And this collection of songs is my favorite so far.

The whole thing was captured on video by Daniel Arnold and his crew, and photographed by Genesis Baez
audio capture by Austin Atwood & Allen Parker

And of course none of this would be possible without our absolutely stone bone crew - Mark Balderston, Aleda Deroche, Amy Fort, Steph Godshall, Ben Gram, Lisa Larson, Anna Morsett, Corey Moses and Alice Wilder and Tom Wironers

Buckle up, keep the rubber side down and enjoy the ride ... (eventually when it all comes out which is TBD but hoping for spring / summer so until then I just mean the ride of life...

there's no copy-pasting because it's a few pages of photos of a notepad, but ocr is good enough these days that it only took a few minutes to edit this into shape

Thank you!

To be believed in by our heroes and trusted by our audience

is about as good as it gets for a songwriter, doesn't it?

"Beautiful World" giving me chills.

https://spontaneouswednesday.blogspot.com/2026/09/2026-08-22.html

someone taped one of the shows

i'm just skimming through it now but wow "loneliest boy" has a real groove

yeah this album's going to be fantastic

i listened to the whole show and this is a great set of songs, i'm very optimistic about this album. the only song i'm not really sold on is "spatchcock chickenshit bingo" but that's still interesting so that's an excellent hit ratio for a triple album

Dammit, link already not working... ufo, think you could pass them on another way?

i just tried it and it still seems to work? what are you having trouble with?

Huh, maybe something up with my VPN, then -- it's working fine with other sites, but whichever browser I use to try and open this particular link, I'm taken to a "can't open the page" message.

https://sponwed.com/Shows/2026/BT_2026-08-22_NashvilleTN_AUD_MP3_320.zip

this is the 320 mp3 download it links to (there's also a flac option and some others) if that helps?

Yesss!!!! That does it! ufo, you have my (and very possibly my whole autumn and winter's &c &c) gratitude

The taper too. Kind taper

"Wait a While" sounding awesome with pedal steel.

I know I've played "Where Will We Go" many times before because the melodies are so familiar, but this arrangement blows the older version out of the water.

This record is gonna be a dream...

God, the lyrics of "Beautiful World" are even better than I realized.

"This song's called 'These Are the Days'. ...these ARE the days."

Adrianne is awesome.

i listened to the whole show and this is a great set of songs, i'm very optimistic about this album. the only song i'm not really sold on is "spatchcock chickenshit bingo" but that's still interesting so that's an excellent hit ratio for a triple album

Yes, superb. What a moving set of songs (and that's to say nothing of the lyrics I didn't or couldn't catch). Music obviously top-notch, catchy & fun & beautiful.

One song after another is taking my breath away. Broke down crying to "Beautiful World" today, my god ... and now "Spatchcock Chickenshit Bingo" is giving me chills. When it goes into the "dance, the sound of the wind" refrains with that fiddle sounding all windswept itself...

"Spatchcock Chickenshit Bingo"

Has Robert Pollard written a cookbook?

it would only be half joking to describe that one as prog-country-rap