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Oct 10, 2019Two Hands is Big Thief’s best to date, and undoubtedly one of the best of the year.
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Oct 7, 2019Arguing which record between this and U.F.O.F. is better is pointless. They are two sides of the same sovereign coin, all it proves is 2019 is Big Thief's year.
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Oct 9, 2019Capping one of the strongest years a rock band has had in a while, this stands as a crowning achievement, the perfect record to close out a tumultuous decade and lead into one where the damage may be irreversible. Two Hands asks what responsibility each of us have going into the next era, offering no clear answers.
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Oct 11, 2019Two Hands is a great record, and a stunning artistic accomplishment – a reminder if you needed one that this is Lenker’s THIRD album in twelve months – but it’s also devilishly clever in that it isn’t a perfect album. If it was, they’d have nowhere to go on the next one.
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Oct 11, 2019The more Big Thief zoom in, the more magical they sound.
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Oct 9, 2019Big Thief proves that it can feed your head, your heart, and your hands in equal measure. Like the musical giants of old there is nothing they can’t do, ably going from strength to strength. Two Hands serves as the band’s call to arms.
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Oct 8, 2019Paired with the dream-like, celestial quality of U.F.O.F., Two Hands shows Big Thief's loving view of the world can be immeasurably intimate and intangible, but also be bare-boned and brutally honest.
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Oct 9, 2019Two Hands does not dramatically depart from the mesmerizing folk-rock fusion of U.F.O.F., but its best moments emphasize the band’s gnarled electric energy, particularly on the career highlight “Not.”
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The WireOct 23, 2019Combined with the sincere and fiery anguish of Lenker’s delivery, this propensity for surprise makes Big Thief a genuinely affecting proposition. [Nov 2019, p.50]
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Oct 14, 2019Two Hands is more earthbound than UFOF – in that there’s nothing here that quite matches that album’s astonishing peaks.
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Oct 14, 2019Ranging from guttural yowling to barely contained explosiveness, Lenker’s voice is the perfect vehicle for Big Thief’s dark, pretty songs about personal and political wreckage.
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Oct 11, 2019You can’t say that Two Hands is an overtly hopeful album, but it is far from hopeless. Rather, it is realistic and grounded. Big Thief’s restraint in adding the production wizardry they showcased on U.F.O.F. is a key move to making the songs of Two Hands really hit their mark.
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Oct 11, 2019Big Thief’s power is in how they understand duality, both in the macro (with their two albums), and in the micro details. This record is best heard alongside its twin, but it’s equally powerful alone.
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Oct 10, 2019While it's hard to talk about Two Hands in 2019 without the context of the stunning U.F.O.F., the album's quality stands on its own, offering its own grade of intimacy, sound, and feel for alternate moods.
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Oct 10, 2019A restrained pace imbues the album with a feeling of deep sedation. It’s a blissful listen from start to finish.
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Oct 8, 2019A raw, primitive nod to the planet we inhabit and our connection to it.
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MojoOct 7, 2019Sparer but equally powerful record [to U.F.O.F.]. [Nov 2019, p.90]
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UncutOct 7, 2019Two Hands is more grounded [than U.F.O.F.]. ... The music is also rawer and more immediate. [Nov 2019, p.22]
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Oct 7, 2019The songs are largely unedited, and this sometimes does not work in its favor. But thankfully, this is seldom the case.
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Nov 7, 2019With its sturdy songcraft and mostly straightforward arrangements, Two Hands is not a revelation so much as a reinforcement and welcome reminder of Big Thief’s greatest strengths.
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Nov 4, 2019Two Hands is a good album, albeit one labouring under a slight sense of anticlimax given what has gone before.
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Q MagazineOct 7, 2019The main distinction is the relative lack of spellbinding melodies. [Nov 2019, p.108]
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 56 out of 60
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Mixed: 1 out of 60
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Negative: 3 out of 60
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Oct 11, 2019Man is 2019 the year for Big Thief! I like this more than U.F.O.F., and I loved that album.
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Oct 11, 2019
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Nov 16, 2021