Big Thief at Radio City Music Hall

SMILING FOREVER, NEVER CRY

WORDS: Benny Sun
PICTURES: Mark Smith
March 4, 2022

I’ve always wondered if people knew they were in the midst of something special. Did the people who saw Jimi Hendrix play the Monterey Pop Festival know they were seeing history being written? Could the audience at CBGB have known they were witnessing a milestone in music when Talking Heads opened for the Ramones with “Psycho Killer” in 1975? Or was it possible the crowd that formed around DJ Kool Herc’s Bronx parties knew they were witnessing the birth of an entire genre, a cultural phenomenon?

    I try not to enter concerts with too many expectations at this point. I’ve only been going to concerts for about a year and a half, but the dozen or so I’ve been to in that time have taught me some valuable lessons, one of which is never go in with expectations. An artist can put on the best show possible, but if your expectations are too high, you’ll still walk out sorely disappointed.

    So okay, I walk into Radio City Music Hall on March 2nd, ready to see Big Thief sing some songs and play some instruments, and not much else. This isn’t to say I wasn’t excited. Big Thief’s massive 2022 double album Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You soundtracked some of my most memorable experiences that year, and the Big Thief binge I went on in preparation for this show had me plenty excited to hear Adrianne Lenker’s lyrical prowess in person. But I certainly had my reservations—Radio City isn’t anyone’s favorite New York venue, and the intimate nature of the band ran the risk of being drowned out by the high ceilings and thousand-person crowd of the theater (something acknowledged by Adrianne in one of her many monologues).

    I got seated about a third of the way into opener and Big Thief co-founder Buck Meek’s set. Playing a set comprised of solo material, both released and unreleased, it was a great setup for the performance I was about to witness. I wasn’t totally familiar with the material they were playing, but it existed in the same lane of indie folk that Big Thief does, albeit with a bit more country influence. Buck Meek’s unique voice and vivid songwriting truly made me excited for his next record, which he claims is coming sometime this year.

    If I didn’t know better, I wouldn’t have been able to tell you which band was the opener and which was the headliner. It’s important to emphasize how bare the band was. There were no visuals, the giant screens of the venue weren’t used, and the most embellishment the band received were a few spotlights that fluttered around the hall while they played. Other than a few instrumental additions throughout the set, the entire show was just the four friends of Big Thief, rocking out.

    Rocking out is the only way I see fit to describe this show. For a band known for their gentle songwriting, Big Thief can get really loud. Their renditions of “Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You” and “Dried Roses” featured a little more electric twang than the studio recording, and many songs received extended guitar solos from Adrianne (and some from Buck too). These solos were really some of the highlights of the show, as Adrianne Lenker proved to be one of the most dynamic guitarists in music right now, and maybe even one of the greatest.

    The absolute epitome of this concept, and the set as a whole, was the near-screamo version of “Sparrow” the band committed to. The already-heart-wrenching song felt like a twisted knife with the addition of Lenker’s unhinged vocals. It was one of the most shocking things I’ve ever seen in concert. I’ll spend the rest of my days attempting to recreate the feeling I got from that performance.

    Don’t get Big Thief live twisted for a hardcore show or anything, though; for about 80% of the show, I was on the brink of waterworks. The opening notes of “Certainty” sent me back to some of my favorite moments of the last twelve months, and a live rendition of “Simulation Swarm” certainly isn’t good for anyone’s mental health. The twang of the guitars made its existential lyrics that much more desolating. Hearing these words come out of the mouth of a real human being crushed me like a middle schooler’s soda can.

    Throughout the set, Adrianne took a few breaks to talk to the audience, airing out her feelings of fatigue—which makes sense given the exhausting 5-week tour they were wrapping up here—but also gratitude. In a lengthy monologue she treated as an award speech, she thanked a list of people the band felt indebted to and detailed their journey as a band. To Adrianne, the journey starting in New York as a broke busker to playing a sold-out show at Radio City has proved their journey full circle, which Adrianne and the band seemed exceedingly grateful for. “But if tomorrow it all goes away,” she specified, “and our record flops and they tell us ‘only five people will show up to your next show,’ I think we will have just as much fun playing for those five people as we are doing now.”

    Ending the set was “Masterpiece,” arguably their signature song (this place does smell like piss and beer), and “Spud Infinity,” the most gutting song about potatoes you’ve ever heard. Joined on stage by sibling Noah Lenker and Twain’s Mat Davidson, the rendition can only be described as zany; the additional pedal steel, jaw harp, and fiddle binged and boinged their way across a climactic finish to a superb show.

Of course, everyone knows you don’t leave until the encore’s finished, so after a short game of adult peekaboo, the band returned for “Changes,” the serene opener to their latest record. As if the rest of the set wasn’t devastating enough, “Changes” felt like the final cut in a series of stabs to the heart, leaving me broken and alone in time, as it marches forward with no regard for its surroundings or my feelings. There’s something hopefully poetic about ending on an intro, as if they’re leaving this epoch as they found it.

I turned to my friend (shoutout Amélie) and said, “This must be what it felt like to see Dylan play in the late 60s.” Seeing Big Thief live cemented something I felt like I knew but I needed confirmation for: being at a Big Thief show is being present in the history of, not just one of the greatest songwriters of all time, but one of the greatest bands of all time. In 70 years when I’m senile and pissy, and the art school hippie kids start arguing about which classic Big Thief record is the most essential, I’ll stand up and say I was there, before promptly dying, satisfied in my participation in a sliver of music history that will never be forgotten.