2019 has been huge for Big Thief: The album they released earlier this year, U.F.O.F., was a critical success, and today, they have dropped their second record of the 2019, Two Hands. On the record, the band shows that they are just as capable of aggression as they are of tenderness, a duality that is perhaps best proved by the lead single, “Not.” To commemorate the album’s release, the group guested on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert and performed the song.
The Late Show stage is an appropriate place for “Not”: Before the song was released as a single, the band had performed it live on a number of occasions, and it had already become a fan favorite before the band shared the studio version. The song’s building energy swelled throughout their performance, and when it came to the epic guitar jam at the end, it was a truly cathartic moment.
Adrianne Lenker previously said of the album, “Two Hands has the songs that I’m the most proud of; I can imagine myself singing them when I’m old. Musically and lyrically, you can’t break it down much further than this. It’s already bare-bones.”
Watch Big Thief perform “Not” on The Late Show above, and read our review of Two Hands here.
Two Hands is out now via 4AD. Get it here.
