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Feb 10, 2022I’m pretty sure that Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You is going to be one of my albums of the year. Because few records managed to be this soothing, and interesting too.
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Feb 9, 2022While her songwriting has always been among the most powerful of the past decade, it’s not only refreshing, but thrilling, to see Big Thief take a broader sonic direction without ever losing the raw passion that put them on the map.
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Feb 11, 2022It’ll be hard to outdo this 20-track masterpiece, but at this point it’s impossible to bet against them.
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Feb 7, 2022This record sounds like four musicians coming together, telepathically attuned to each other’s ideas, reveling in the strange mystery that unfolds when they play together under the same roof—a fragile sanctuary from the collapsing world outside.
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Dec 7, 2022It’s a beautiful record to immerse yourself in and just lose track of time for a while – once its myriad charms have become apparent, you won’t want to listen to anything else.
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Feb 14, 2022The result is the most compelling case in years on the potential of the journey—the insights to be gleaned, the friendships to be strengthened, your own potential waiting to be untapped. Albums like DNWMIBIY make you believe in magic again.
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Feb 10, 2022They’ve come out the other end with a truly talismanic record that will live long in the memory for any who experience it.
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Feb 10, 2022Dragon is as heavy in its lyrical concerns as any previous Big Thief record, and more ambitious in its musical ideas than all of them. But it also sounds unburdened, animated by a newfound sense of childlike exploration and play.
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Feb 9, 2022‘Dragon New…’ is largely an epic of intimate, stripped-back proportions. Put simply, it’s a masterpiece.
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Feb 8, 2022While Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You is indeed a lot of things, if it’s anything in particular, it’s a flex. It’s a reassertion that the band can essentially do no wrong, and even when they get close, it’s easier to interpret them toeing the borders of brilliance.
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Feb 7, 2022The most surprising aspect of DNWMIBIY is that for a double album, the quality control is high and the sequencing is especially effective. ... In the meantime, DNWMIBIY is the first album to join my best of 2022 list.
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UncutFeb 7, 2022Instantly satisfying, but its charms and mysteries will resound for years. [Mar 2022, p.25]
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Feb 7, 2022That Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You's vast ecosystem can support this multitude of sounds and voices is astonishing. Even more so is the way its greens seem to become greener — its skies more full of stars, its waters clearer — the more time you spend with it. It's a universe all its own, clarified a bit more with every listen.
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Feb 14, 2022Throughout this adventurous new double-album, Big Thief dives into both the natural and otherworldly, paving new sounds and textures while uncovering new mysteries.
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The WireMar 30, 2022Adrianne Lenker’s songwriting and vocals have never been more inclusive yet forebodingly sui generis, sealing that simultaneous conviviality and strangeness that makes Big Thief’s music so addictive, and the band have got tighter and warmer from the years of touring that preceded the album’s creation. [Mar 2022, p.42]
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Feb 14, 2022The result is their most varied and expansive record to date.
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Feb 10, 2022It is uniformly confident and generally looser than past releases, but it is no singular thing.
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Feb 10, 2022Those in search of a tightly cohesive album knitted around a single concept have probably come to the wrong place entirely – but for a sprawling answer to the band’s two huge 2019 breakthrough records ‘Two Hands’ and ‘U.F.F.O’, then look no further.
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Feb 7, 2022If Dragon ends up being a fan favorite just for the fact that it has the most songs, the most sounds, and the ability to make you notice a new favorite each time through, that's a perfectly fine way to view it. [Dec 2021 - Feb 2022, p.150]
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MojoFeb 7, 2022Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You is both an album of admirable ambition and a mantra worth repeating until its mysteries are revealed. [Mar 2022, p.81]
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Feb 14, 2022A doubling down on their unapologetically weirdest influences; instead, a scattershot sampling of basically every sound they can conjure, recorded in every different way. The only thing Dragon... cements is that nothing about Big Thief is set in stone, which is in its own way an absolutely remarkable achievement.
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Feb 10, 2022It seems unfair to call DNWMIBIY a failed experiment, as it's loaded with gems -- including some of Big Thief's most free-spirited work to date -- however, it lands much more like a showreel than a plotted album.
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Feb 8, 2022Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You can feel redundant at points, and might be a little much to wade through unless you already roll waist-deep with the Big Thief experience. Yet the cumulative sense of the open-ended, accidental, communal, and casual is worth any slowish spots along the way. This is a band that deserves the time you lend it.
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Feb 7, 2022The LP steps away from their usual repertoire, offering a softer, more stripped-back approach to their musings, teetering on the edge of almost folk-rock.
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Feb 7, 2022Despite tracks that feel unfinished or experiments gone awry, Big Thief’s artistic vision is more diverse and fully realized on Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You than on any of their past releases.
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Feb 7, 2022None of this group of songs are as good as those from her concise solo album, which only sprawled out with the ambient abstractness of its instrumental companion, something new and unheard for her. Here, listless listening is interrupted by the dangerous, mystical Simulation Swarm, saving the record’s back half. Big Thief are at their most beguiling when giving in to weird experiments.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 72 out of 77
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Mixed: 2 out of 77
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Negative: 3 out of 77
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Feb 13, 2022
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Mar 7, 2022
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Feb 23, 2022