Big Thief has been on a particularly prolific streak over the past few years. The band released two great albums, U.F.O.F. and Two Hands, in 2019. Then three members released solo albums — drummer James Krivchenia’s A New Found Relaxation, singer-songwriter Adrianne Lenker’s songs and instrumentals (which made Vulture’s favorite albums of 2020), and guitarist Buck Meek’s Two Saviors — in 2020 and 2021. The band has been releasing stellar singles since this August, and now Big Thief has announced those songs will be on an upcoming double album. Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You, with 20 tracks and a fittingly long title, is out February 11, 2022. (The title comes from a lyric on one of Lenker’s solo songs, “anything.”) The band recorded the album in four separate locations: upstate New York; Topanga Canyon, California; near Telluride, Colorado; and Tucson, Arizona. It’s the first Big Thief album to be produced by Krivchenia and the band’s fifth full-length overall, following 2016’s Masterpiece and 2017’s Capacity. “One of the things that bonds us together as a band is pure magic,” Lenker said in a statement. “I think we all have the same guide and none of us have ever spoken what it is because we couldn’t name it, but somehow, we are all going for the same thing, and when we hit it … we all know it’s it, but none of us to this day, or maybe ever, will be able to articulate in words what the ‘it’ is. Something about it is magic to me.”
Big Thief accompanied the announcement with massive new single “Time Escaping,” on which the band experiments with synthesizers and a raucous percussion section. The song was recorded during the Topanga Canyon session, alongside previous single “Little Things.” Past singles “Sparrow” and “Certainty” were recorded upstate, and “Change” was recorded in Colorado. Hearing more from those sessions — and what the band recorded in Arizona with fiddle player Mat Davidson — just became a great reason to look forward to 2022.
