Brooklyn, New York’s Big Thief released Capacity, their second album, in 2017. The folk-rock quartet followed their fantastic début, Masterpiece, with an album of life’s messy moments.
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The first album represents an ideal—something to aim toward. It’s the work still needed ahead. And when you realize how much work is in front of you, Capacity wonders how much we can take. It homes in on the flaws, how much love hurts and heals, and what it means to be human.
Big Thief’s Adrianne Lenker’s writing echoes Joni Mitchell’s confessionals, painting portraits of human complexity. But she’s writing about more than the general human condition. Lenker zooms in on how each of us carries multiple versions of ourselves.
In their hauntingly beautiful song “Shark Smile,” Big Thief shows the exposed wounds of love and loss. The reason love overwhelms us is knowing someday it will all go away. “Shark Smile” is the instant it vanishes.
Road Trip
The road-trippin’ song begins with Lenker’s narrator spotting a woman in a yellow van. The unnamed driver intrigues her while her partner, Evelyn, goes quiet—perhaps from jealousy.
As all road trips do, this one targets a destination, but Lenker’s aiming for something darker here.
She was a shark smile in a yellow van
She came around, and I stole a glance in my youth
A vampire, Evelyn, shown quiet as roses sting
It came over me at a bad time
But who wouldn’t ride on a moonlit line?
Had her in my eye, 85 down the road of a dead-end gleam
Evelyn and her partner drive down the highway, and the imagery recalls Springsteen metaphors through a David Lynch lens. Early in the road trip, hope remains through the freedom of the road and the anticipation of a new place. Sometimes, there’s no reason to travel, escape, or have adventures; people just feel the nagging need to keep moving.
She looked over with a part smile
Caught up in the twinkle, it could take awhile
And the money pile on the dashboard fluttering
While the narrator takes in Evelyn’s kisses like oxygen, chaos lurks around the bend. The car careens off the road before smashing into a guardrail. You can imagine the scene, the point of impact where consciousness leaves the body.
Evelyn’s kiss was oxygen
I leaned over to take it in
As we went howling through the edge of south Des Moines
It came over me at a bad time
She burned over the double line
She impaled as I reached my hand for the guardrail
Ooh, the guardrail
Baby, Take Me
Throughout the song, Evelyn repeats, “Baby, take me.” Earlier in the song, the phrase is tender, like how one surrenders to a lover. But at the point of impact, against the guardrail, it’s a plea for help. Evelyn is surrendering at the scene of the crash. She’s submitting to death.
And she said woo
Baby, take me
And I said woo
Baby, take me too
The instrumental track opens “Shark Smile” with cataclysmic noise before the pitter-patter groove kicks in. As Lenker tells the story, the steady heartbeat rhythm of bassist Max Oleartchik and drummer James Krivchenia support her.
Guitarist Buck Meek foreshadows oblivion with dashed brushes of reverb that glimpse the universe calling fate to action. Meanwhile, Lenker narrates the action, detached and unemotional about the whole thing.
Oxygen
At first glance, Lenker sounds removed from the characters. She tells the story like she’s read about it in a newspaper. But her writing is so easy and pure, and by the time she repeats “guardrail,” her voice breaking and breathless, pining for the oxygen kisses from earlier in the song, you realize it’s not detachment in her delivery—it is penetrating shock.
Accidents arrive unexpectedly. And when the unexpected happens, the mind isn’t prepared. So, speaking about the second consciousness leaves, the body’s flailing response is what it looks like when awareness quits.
People talk about consciousness; some have described it as humans having a little invisible person in their heads steering the ship. We cannot see it until it leaves and the body jerks.
Guardrails
The guardrail in “Shark Smile” is the physical structure highway engineers use to reduce severe accidents. But sometimes the guardrail, while there to protect, is so strong it destroys. Even in its mangled form, parts of the rail remain, while the unlucky passenger doesn’t.
Partners can be guardrails, too. Relationships guard against loneliness but also offer checks and balances against destructive impulses. Maybe that’s why Evelyn became jealous when her partner glanced at the woman in the yellow van with a shark smile.
She didn’t want her lover taken away from her. Little did she know, miles down the highway, a guardrail would steal Evelyn away.
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Photo by Emma McIntyre/Getty Images for FYF
