The animation springing from each song translated to the live show, intensifying as pockets of enthusiastic fans acted as backing s ingers - best shown with “Masterpiece,” which provoked a choral chant. The group’s 2022 album Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You fills listeners with rhetorical and rhythmic adventure. Texture ran wild through the night, with scattered brushes tickling the crown of Krivchenia’s drums, a lightness adding novelty to tracks such as “Two Hands.” Countless guitar changes, almost one per song change for Meek, seemed like second nature for Big Thief and didn’t distract from the band’s setlist.

Lenker and the motley crew painted the stage with moving chiaroscuro, reflecting the depth of the band’s discography. Constant communication, through direct verbal or subtle physical cues, aided in the group’s synchrony for interludes of improvisation that spellbound the crowd in frozen glee. The band’s intimacy intoxicated the theater, outweighing any of the Fox’s stone sculpted grandiose. Drummer James Krivchenia and bassist Max Oleartchik sat respectively sandwiched, but a connection on the verge of visceral physicality ebbed between the four figures.īig Thief transported its Bay-Area-hailing fans to the wooden Catskills home recording studio where its past albums magically came into fruition. The crowd swayed to the steady, chest-pounding downbeats of beloved tracks “Replaced” and “Simulation Swarm.”īig Thief framed the stage in a triangular composition, sloping from guitarist Buck Meek’s upright stance down to singer Adrianne Lenker’s seated strumming. A menagerie of characters filled the pulpit, befitted with cardigans, Blundstones, braids and tears. The overwhelming hour that passed May 7 at Oakland’s Fox Theater proved the petite madame correct, while satisfying the crowd’s voracious appetite for Big Thief’s strained harmonies. In the lightest of tones, she spoke high praises - understood by those who retained their high school French lessons - of the “young, incredible” artists flanking her sides. In typical Big Thief lore and wonder, the group introduced its set with a small French woman, handkerchief tied around her chin and apron skirt gracing the stage floor.

Big thief fox theater