Masterpiece

“Real love makes your lungs black,” Adrianne Lenker sings on “Real Love”. “Real love is a heart attack.” A raft of feedback overpowers the song, and distills Big Thief’s knack for setting brutal intimacy on a nakedly epic scale. Masterpiece is full of heavy-hearted guitar jams that specialise in grief (“Masterpiece”), shame (“Paul”), and regret (“Vegas”), made ever more brutal by Lenker’s voice, which billows like a flag in a storm, tattered, and proud.