Big Thief - Capacity [4AD]

Big Thief had barely finished introducing themselves with 2016's Masterpiece when they retreated to a farmhouse studio in snowy upstate New York to make its follow-up. Working on analog equipment with producer Andrew Sarlo, the Brooklyn quartet of Adrianne Lenker, Buck Meek, Max Oleartchik, and James Krivchenia came back with Capacity, released in June 2017. It is a quieter, stranger, and more assured record than the debut, and the one that convinced a lot of people this band was built to last.

Lenker's songs are the center of it. She writes about a gallery of complicated women, about family, injury, and identity, with details so close they can feel overheard. "Shark Smile" is the song most listeners come in on, a love story that barrels down the highway toward a crash on a groove that makes it sound like a celebration. "Mythological Beauty" is hushed and unflinching, "Mary" drifts by on piano and a rush of memory, and the opener "Pretty Things" sets the tone with little more than voice and guitar. The band plays with restraint throughout, letting Meek's guitar and the rhythm section swell up only when a song demands it.

The response was immediate. Capacity landed near the top of many best-of-the-year lists in 2017, and it has only grown in stature as Big Thief have become one of the defining bands of their generation. These eleven songs show the tenderness and nerve that the later, bigger records built on.

This 4AD pressing presents the album on standard black vinyl. If you came to Big Thief through the later records, this is the one to go back for.