Capacity - By Big Thief

ALBUM TITLE: Capacity

ARTIST: Big Thief

GENRE: Indie Rock

LISTEN HERE: Bandcamp

How many albums have made you downright cry? For me it’s just a handful, but the other day when I listened to Big Thief’s Capacity for the very first time, I added another to the list. Listening to Capacity felt like having all of the confusion, violence, and love of my own weird Midwestern childhood thrown back at me. It’s autobiographical in the same way that cleaning out your childhood bedroom is, finding scraps of unfinished journal entries and old photographs. Capacity is self-aware, like someone narrating their life as if it were a movie.

Singer and songwriter Adrianne Lenker has had an extremely unique life so far, as she describes in this interview, aptly titled “Big Thief’s Adrianne Lenker Has Seen Some Shit”. She was born into a religious cult, with a father whose relationship to God was constantly fluctuating and a mother who was still growing up while she raised her own children. Lenker’s father encouraged her to pursue music, which led to her getting a full scholarship to Berklee School of Music after playing a song in the office of the Dean of Admissions. She processes her past and creates her own renditions and imagery to capture what she has lived, as well as what is still yet to come.

The first track, “Pretty Things”, has tender but unwavering vocals set over an acoustic guitar. The lyric that strikes me most is “don’t take me for a fool, there’s a woman inside of me./There’s one inside of you too.” Lenker says this is a mantra she repeats to herself to equate femininity with power. In the song it is contrasted with lines about forceful sex and sugary lips, showing how “masculine” and “feminine” forces can collide during sex. In the next track, “Shark Teeth,” with a voice that builds in force without losing itself, the song describes a woman with a “shark smile” who the speaker becomes infatuated with. They drive off together until getting into a traffic accident in Des Moines. It is a bizarre story of teenage rebellion punctuated by a guitar singing out like electric light on the side of a highway. “She said whoo, baby, take me,/ and I said whoo, baby, take me too.”

The track “Capacity” shows Lenker’s talent for using the sounds in words like notes on a guitar. She sings, “I am a beautiful bird./Fluttered and floating,/ swollen and hollowed for heaven.” The internal rhyme and alliteration of these words work with the rhythmic guitar chords and drums to create their own level of musicality. “Capacity” describes being in a type of captivity. Singing about “Make-believe everything is really hanging on” over beautiful airy guitar lines, but there is a darkness underneath, notes that are slightly discordant, a voice that knows the world can be an unhappy place.

Next is “Watering,” which for me is the most thematically jarring song on the album. We hear a voice that breaks with its melodic jumps over matter-of-fact drums that subtly build tension, like walking through a house in the dark, unsure where your steps will fall. It’s broken by guitar, grumbling notes like the rusty fear that the song describes while Lenker sings “I scream.” “Watering” describes the fear of being followed home by a man and imagining his attack and obsessive need for violence.

After “Watering” the album becomes more concerned with themes of childhood, especially the relationship between a daughter and parents. Lenker addresses her mother and memories of her childhood like her experience on coming of age. In “Coma,” a beautiful and simple acoustic song, she tells her mother to leave her “protective coma,” encouraging her to find new meaning in her life. Then the album moves into “Great White Shark,” recalling the shark imagery from “Shark Teeth” in a fresh way, using sharks as a representation of the familiar. The arpeggiated guitar plus the ocean imagery gives the song a to-and-fro momentum like crashing waves.

“Mythological Beauty” is probably my personal favorite from the album. It addresses Lenker’s mother once again, now describing pivotal moments in her mother’s life with stark detail, coming back to the chorus “If you wanna leave/ You just have to say/You’re all caught up inside/ But you know the way.” The most memorable image from this song for me (possibly in the whole album) is Lenker describing an accident in her childhood that almost took her life, and the aftermath with her mother driving her to the hospital “praying don’t let my baby die.” This song praises motherhood and sacrifice, as well as releasing your parents from their responsibilities and the life that is familiar to them. It makes me think of my own mother, and when in my adolescence I started to realize that she too is a person with hopes and fears, not a mythological figure in my life, and I wondered how on earth she got this far.

“Objects” begins with the words “Oh, volcanoes melting/Love is overwhelming/Letting your insides out,” showing once again how Capacity uses intense imagery to elevate its lyrics. “Objects” is a song of passionate love, possibly a first love, one that is capable of “breaking your guard down.” Its simplicity drives the complete love it describes, with Lenker singing, “You turn your own light on inside of me.” Potential lovers take note: the next time I fall for someone, this song is definitely going on their mixtape.

“Haley,” by contrast, is about losing love but keeping your arms open wide enough for it to come back. I love the way the chorus lilts, mixing up rhythms, swaying into a high register, incorporating some cool shimmery synth noises. It is about letting go of love but saying, “if you wanna come back, you know my arms are always open.” It conveys purity and love from afar and wishes someone well. If “Objects” goes on my head-over-heels playlist, “Haley” will go on my “after we break up but I still really like you and we can totally be friends” playlist.

The next song, “Mary,” distinguishes itself from the tracklist with the sheer strength of its lyricism. Just read this out loud: “Monastery monochrome/ Boom balloon machine and all/ Diamond rings and gutter bones.” The scenes painted are abstract, but the sounds of the words float together beautifully. It recalls what Joanna Newsom does sometimes with alliteration and onomatopoeia, but the way the lyrics of “Mary” flow together into a stream of consciousness rhythm is something I have genuinely never heard before. That, plus the lyric “will you love me like you loved me in the January rain”. makes this song feel like a kinda home, a place to go when you’re reminiscing under a soft blanket. Maybe rain is falling outside. “Mary” sounds like childhood but also losing it, having a best friend, losing love, looking back on your life, and seeing the memories blend together.

However, by the time the album arrives at “Black Diamonds” we hear triumph. It’s the type of ending that frees you. “Black Diamonds” brings back the experiences that are conveyed in the album and leaves you with the reassurance of “okay, I got this, I can keep going.” In the final verse on the album, Lenker sings, “So much more to do/Come on, let me make a man outta you/I could gather you and you tell the truth/You could cry inside my arms.” So here we are. Vulnerable but ready to love, ready to grow, ready for the next chapter.

Capacity by Big Thief is a beautiful album that deserves so much attention. It does what makes music good for me: it puts the band’s heart into every song, into every word that's sung. Filled with poetic lyrics and beautifully constructed melodies, this is an album you can grow with.

Listen to Capacity below:

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