Put on “Change” by Big Thief and give it a listen. It is the first song on the album “Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You,” which has rapidly become one of my favorite albums of this year. I was introduced to Big Thief by my boyfriend, and since then, I couldn’t stop listening to the album even if I tried. We bonded over Indie music and “Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You” quickly became something special to us both. I learned “Change” on guitar for him, tying the music to a poignant moment for us both.
To begin, the album itself is certainly intriguing. Hearing “Change” for the first time, I asked, “So what’s the album?” and then was caught off guard by this mouthful of a name. Similarly, the songs on this album are jam-packed and offbeat, much like the title. My two favorite songs are “Spud Infinity” and “Change,” and I love these masterpieces because they remind me to notice the beauty in life.
The song “Change” begins with an aloof acoustic guitar and drum combo. It rises into the first verse like the sun finally peaking over the horizon line. Adrianne Lenker sings about changing like the different elements. Her gentle voice carries those similes to us like a helping hand. She is trying to aid our understanding of living in the moment.
Her conversational tone asks if you would “Live forever, never die? / While everything around you passes,” and you feel as though you must answer. The drums persist, and suddenly a short guitar solo commences, adding a twangy flare to the consistent verses. Like Big Thief planned, the solo adds change.
Lenker charms us listeners like snakes, then in the next verse another vocalist harmonizes. This produces a personal effect, as if now two people are urging you to answer: Is the pursuit of novelty worth forgetting to enjoy the moment? So, please, reflect on the intuitive answer this music entrusts to you.
If “Change” invites us to slow down and embrace life’s impermanence, “Spud Infinity” takes that idea and flips it on its head with a playful and surreal twist. As soon as you hear that sharp, ringing violin, you are in another world. It is coupled with… wait… are those frogs ribbiting the beat? This musical choice waves a finger in our face disapprovingly, forewarning, “You know, don’t take this so seriously,” and “Spud Infinity” does that by shocking us with unconventional instrumentation.
We’re always asking ourselves, “What’s it gonna take?” which Lenker chants in desperation, “To free the celestial body?” Lenker sings the word “celestial” in three beats. It sounds like “Sea-les-tial”. This is intentional, because she references a body of water and a body of people. By breaking the word in this way, she reminds us that just as water blends seamlessly into the ocean, we too, are interconnected—a small part of something vast and beautiful.
One of my favorite lines is “From way up there it looks so small / From way down here it looks so small / One peculiar organism aren’t we all together?” Then, as Adrianne Lenker suggests, realizing the unimportance of stressful details allows us to appreciate life more. Everyone knows how to make beauty and how “All of us know how to dance, even with just one finger.”
And then she asks, “What’s it gonna take?” hoping that the listener realizes how beautiful it is that we all are in this together. She points out in a semi-insulting manner, “A dime a dozen aren’t we just.” The intention is to poke fun at the listener, being subjected to unexpected vocals and amphibious croaking. It brings light to the heavy message that we also need to let go of the baggage we carry in our pasts and “[accept] the alien [we]’ve rejected in [our] own heart[s]”
“Spud Infinity” focuses on letting go of the past, and “Change” focuses on letting go of the future, making them beautiful complements to each other. They give us the same advice for different areas of our lives, both urging us to slow down and appreciate the beauty of life.
Big Thief asks us to embrace both change and stillness, the past and present. Maybe the real question isn’t just “What’s it gonna take?” but rather—are we ready to listen?