Big Thief Releases 2 New Songs

Big Thief today shared “Little Things” and “Sparrow,” a pair of singles recorded last year. The songs mark the first release of new music from the band since their Two Hands album in 2019.

The Brooklyn-based quartet assembled with Shawn Everett at Topanga, California’s Five Star Studios in October of 2020 to lay down “Little Things,” while “Sparrow” was recorded with Sam Evian during sessions held in July/August 2020 at Flying Cloud Recordings in New York’s Catskills region. Big Thief drummer James Krivchenia produced both tracks.

“It’s in this sort of evolving free time signature where the beat is always changing,” said Krivchenia of “Little Things” who added, “so [Big Thief bassist] Max [Oleartchik] and I were just flowing with it and guessing where the downbeats were – which gives the groove a really cool light feeling.” The result is a track accurately described in press materials as “one of the band’s most propulsive songs yet.”

Meanwhile, “Sparrow” is a more sparse and folk-tinged number. The single out today is Big Thief’s first take on the song. “We all just scattered about the room without headphones, focused and in the music – you could feel that something special was happening,” explained Krivchenia. “It was a funny instrumentation that had a really cool natural arrangement chemistry – Max on piano, [guitarist] Buck [Meek] providing this dark ambience, me on floor tom and snare and [vocalist/guitarist] Adrianne [Lenker] in the middle of it with the acoustic and singing.”

Stream Big Thief’s “Little Things” and “Sparrow” below:

Big Thief will soon hit the road for a fall tour of the U.S.