The first music the crowd heard was one voice and one acoustic guitar. Adrianne Lenker sat down and sang a song called “Horsepower”, alone. By the end of the night, Big Thief had played all 29 songs of an unreleased triple album of the same name, with a stage full of guests that included Iris DeMent, Gillian Welch and Lucinda Williams.
The shows took place at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville on Saturday 22 and Sunday 23 August. Nobody had been told in advance, and the record still has no official release date. Here is what listeners heard, who played, and what the band has said about when Horsepower comes out.
A Show Nobody Was Told About
The clues were there on the way in. There was no opening act, posters asked fans not to use their phones, and the stage was set with enough seats for a band three times Big Thief’s size, with fiddles waiting on stands, Rolling Stone reported.
Lenker then told the room that the band had recorded a triple album in Nashville in May. It would be played in full, but not in its running order, across two sets with an intermission. Fans hoping for older favourites were warned early. “If you had hopes of hearing songs you know, those can be discarded,” she said, as quoted by Stereogum.
Stereogum’s Ryan Leas put the first night’s crowd at 2,400. The rest of the band’s Somersault Slide 360 tour had drawn on songs from across their catalogue, Uncut noted, and Lenker told the audience these were the only shows where Horsepower would be performed this way.
Who Played With Big Thief at the Ryman
Big Thief are now a trio: Lenker and Buck Meek on vocals and guitars, and James Krivchenia on drums, with Joshua Crumbly on bass for the tour. The four began seated around a large wooden table. NPR’s Ann Powers reported that Lenker said the band had found the table on Facebook Marketplace and brought it into Sound Emporium, the Nashville studio where they recorded the album.
The guests came in one at a time over the first hour. Pedal steel player Russ Pahl was the first to join. Greg Leisz, also on pedal steel and guitar, and a fiddle section of Zosha Warpeha, Hannah Read and Richard Bowden followed. Then Iris DeMent took a seat beside Lenker and stayed there for the rest of the show, with Gillian Welch next to her on voice, banjo and tambourine.
DeMent’s place in the story is not an accident. Rolling Stone recalled that Lenker has said she and Meek bonded over Iris DeMent when they first met. “Where Will We Go” closed the first set, according to Stereogum, and NPR reported that DeMent took the lead for one verse of it.
Lucinda Williams walked on for the encore both nights, and the Ryman, in Leas’s words, lost its mind. On the second night, Rodney Crowell was a surprise addition, singing on “Oldest” and “Bright Future”, according to Stereogum’s update from that show.
The Session Players Who Shaped Horsepower
The players on stage were not a pickup band. Powers described Pahl and Leisz as pedal steel masters who have taken country instruments into jazz, rock and pop, through work with artists as different as Beck, Miranda Lambert, Joni Mitchell, Bill Frisell and Lana Del Rey. Pahl also played for years with T-Bone Burnett.
The fiddle section came from different worlds too. Hannah Read and Zosha Warpeha are contemporary composers, and Richard Bowden has long been a key member of Terry Allen’s Panhandle Mystery Band, according to NPR. Lenker and Meek kept introducing everyone simply as their favourite musicians, Powers noted, rather than by any genre label.
Uncut described the layout: a long, loose horseshoe behind an oak dining table, with Welch and DeMent beside Lenker, the two pedal steel players on the opposite flank with Meek, Crumbly and Krivchenia, and the fiddlers at the far end. Not everything ran smoothly. Lenker forgot the chords to one passage and restarted it, a guitar cable briefly refused to work, and she admitted to being nervous. Stereogum heard those moments as charmingly ramshackle rather than as mistakes.
What Listeners Heard From Horsepower
The show was built as a slow rise. After the solo title track, the band played a few sparse songs on their own, and the sound filled out as each player arrived. Leas described “Space and Time” as floaty and gorgeous, and Uncut picked out the ominous, string-driven urgency of “Bright Future”.
Country music is closer to the surface than before. Rolling Stone called it some of the twangiest work the band have done, and Stereogum heard spacious ballads, with “Avalanche, Hurricane” a highlight, and a few country-rock songs close to full tilt. “Spatchcock Chickenshit Bingo” had half the band, and then the audience, stomping and clapping while Lenker half-spoke her way through its wordplay.
Some of the songs were not brand new. The title track was first played live about three and a half years ago, Stereogum noted, and “Spatchcock Chickenshit Bingo” had already turned up in concert. Rolling Stone added that one song, first known as “Bloom” and now called “21”, was the first song Lenker and Meek ever wrote together.
Lenker dedicated “6-7-8-9 She’s Fine” to her girlfriend. The last song of the night, “Gift Pleasure Joy”, was written in the studio during the sessions and is about making the record itself. Williams joined in on its chorus, according to NPR.
The Songs Behind the Title
Uncut’s reviewer listened closely to the words. Across the 29 songs, Lenker keeps coming back to cars: driving, riding as a passenger, or simply leaving. That imagery ties into the album’s title and to wider themes of movement and change, the review said, and “lyrically it ranks among Lenker’s strongest work.”
The songs also leave room for lighter moments. Uncut heard a hint of Vampire Weekend in the buoyant rhythm of “Gift Pleasure Joy”, and a reference to Purple Rain that drew one of the biggest cheers of the night. There also appeared to be a nod to Lenker’s Minnesota upbringing.
Rolling Stone heard echoes of Gram Parsons, Joni Mitchell, John Prine and Rodney Crowell, and even a little Paul Simon and Radiohead, in the songs. For listeners who know the band mainly through their indie rock records, that list is the best clue to how Horsepower may sound.
Why Horsepower Is a Surprise So Soon
The timing is what made the weekend unusual. Big Thief released Double Infinity only last September, their first record without founding bassist Max Oleartchik. Uncut ranked it No. 17 in its albums of the year, and few people expected another album to be finished and ready so soon, let alone a triple album.
Uncut counts Horsepower as the band’s seventh album. It is also not the first time Big Thief have played unreleased music to a crowd. Leas recalled seeing them in 2019, two days after U.F.O.F. came out, when half the set came from Two Hands, a sister album that was still a secret at the time.
The Ryman itself adds weight. Uncut used the hall’s nickname, “the Mother Church”, and Powers noted that in Nashville these particular guests came “draped in country gold”. The weekend was also filmed for future release, Stereogum reported, and Rolling Stone saw multiple cameras documenting the night for a concert film. No details have been announced.
When Horsepower Comes Out
There is no firm date yet. After the second show, Stereogum reported that the band said Horsepower will be released in the spring, and NPR described it as a triple album that will not be out until sometime next year.
Until then, the Ryman shows are the only full hearing the record has had. Powers wrote that it was “one of the most engrossing experiences of music coming alive within its own moment that I’ve been lucky to join”, and Uncut judged the unveiling as ambitious a gesture as anything Big Thief have tried.
GetMusic.News’s curator team:
Until Horsepower is out, the way in is backwards. Start with Double Infinity, the last record Big Thief made with a large cast of collaborators, then play Adrianne Lenker’s solo album Bright Future, which already holds one of the Horsepower songs. The Ryman weekend suggests the new record takes that open-door way of working as far as it can go.
For another story about musicians building something together in a room, read how eleven people built a shoegaze festival and sold it out. Horsepower is expected in the spring.
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