Reviews
"As always, Adrianne Lenker’s lyrics mix the pedestrian with the otherworldly in her trademark poetic way...", "Over the course of 20 sprawling tracks, you'll hear flute, electric guitar, tambourines, accordion, and someone playing icicles.", "A lovable grab bag, filled with everything from sobering ballads to ephemeral, rubber-band-snapping fun....The band proves they are unconcerned with keeping the status quo.", "A 20-song epic of kaleidoscopic invention, striking beauty, and wigged-out humor, rambling far beyond the bounds of their previous work.", "It is an uncommonly warm and generous record, 20 songs in all -- flitting from campfire folk to clanging cosmic rumination to countrified hoedown in its first three tracks alone -- and it solidifies Adrianne Lenker’s place as one of the greatest songwriters to emerge in the last five years.", "Big Thief’s fifth offering is one of the great domestic-weirdness records, where the mere act of cooking breakfast with the radio on can be a psychedelic experience -- you can just picture the happy creatures dancing on Adrianne Lenker’s lawn outside.", 4 stars out of 5 -- "Recalling both Johnny Cash and Neil Young, ‘Sparrow’ and ‘Changes’ are home to some of Lenker’s finest songwriting; the latter finds her trying make sense of the marching of time, and does so beautifully.", "It gambolled happily from ecstatic indie-rock to dusty country stomps to chilly folk parables, with Adrianne Lenker’s songwriting approaching the clear-sighted precision of a Dylan or a Cohen.", 3.5 stars out of 5 -- "They've pulled off the neat trick of becoming at once more rootsy and more cosmic, earthier but somehow less earthbound, suggesting Bright Eyes and Jenny Lewis fans tapping into the old, weird America as the blueprint for their dream-folk epiphanies.", "They threw everything at this record, including playing the icicles and refusing to limit the gaze of their mighty songwriting force....And they’ve come out the other end with a truly talismanic record that will live long in the memory for any who experience it.", "Adrianne Lenker’s voice may be an acquired taste, with shades of idiosyncratic forebears like Karen Dalton, but it’s a marvelous one, and the way it blends with Buck Meek’s guitar demonstrates the magic that can happen between musicians after years of creating together."
