It’s a big day for Big Thief: The celebrated indie-rock collective have dropped two new songs to follow up their 2019 album Two Hands. “Little Things” is a sprawling, upbeat track led by strong, jangling guitar. The more toned-down “Sparrow,” meanwhile, is a contemplative listen. Both were produced by drummer James Krivchenia and recorded at Five Star Studios in Topanga, California, and Flying Cloud Recordings in the Catskills.
Of “Little Things,” Krivchenia said, “It’s in this sort of evolving free time signature where the beat is always changing, so Max [Oleartchik, bassist] and I were just flowing with it and guessing where the downbeats were – which gives the groove a really cool light feeling.” Adding about “Sparrow,” Krivchenia followed up: “We all just scattered about the room without headphones, focused and in the music — you could feel that something special was happening. It was a funny instrumentation that had a really cool natural arrangement chemistry — Max on piano, Buck [Meek, guitarist/vocalist] providing this dark ambience, me on floor tom and snare and Adrianne [Lenker] in the middle of it with the acoustic and singing.”
Big Thief, who released both critically acclaimed albums Two Hands and U.F.O.F. in 2019, have been working on their fifth album over the past year. Meek, who is also working on a solo album to follow 2021’s Two Saviors, told Guitar.com, “Lockdown was a well-needed respite, I needed a break. And then Big Thief ended up making new music for nearly six months, which was really nice because we’ve been touring so hard we’ve had little chance to record in the last couple of years.”
Listen to both “Little Things” and “Sparrow” above.