“Real love,” Adrianne Lenker declares about 10 minutes into Big Thief‘s debut,“is a heart attack.” Hers is a lexicon of split lips, blackened lungs, all the interstitial cracks that provide rough outlines for a human body, the scribbles of a deity bent on gallows humour. Like so many of their Saddle Creek forebears, Big Thief can’t help but stare at your wounds; not because they’re sadists, but because they’ve noticed something incredible in the way you choose to cauterise them. It’s a shared experience, and one that Masterpiece documents with stirring emotional fortitude.
Matthew Neale 