Big Thief3Arena, Dublin★★★★☆
Big Thief steal the show at 3Arena in Dublin with a brilliantly cathartic concert that confirms their status as Gen Z’s favourite indie band. They have ascended to the rarefied realm of arena headliners thanks to a gift for larger-than-life angst pop that recalls the glory days of Radiohead and REM. But they are no indie-disco karaoke act. Their hauntingly beautiful songs have two feet in the 21st century, reflecting their audience’s hunger for authenticity in an artificial world.
That eerie effect is further amplified by the awkward charisma of Adrienne Lenker. Smiling shyly beneath an angular fringe, the frontwoman sings like an emotionally unspooling Taylor Swift. Yet her body language is that of the reluctant star, a familiar hallmark of alternative pop all the way back to Thom Yorke and beyond.
Lenker and her bandmates have taken the slow road to the big time since forming in Brooklyn in 2015. But the big time has assuredly now arrived. This powerfully raw performance has everything you’d associate with an arena concert. During one song the audience goes all Coldplay and waves glowing phones. Fans take selfies, just as Swifties would when the hits start coming. Afterwards, the crowd spills out, clutching their purchases from the merch stall.
So far so 21st-century arena rock. But a fantastically gut-punching set suggests that Big Thief are determined to negotiate success while holding on to their sense of self as outsiders. If the evening crests one high after another it is never pandering or crowd-pleasing. Sticking to the basics, the visual show does not extend beyond autumnal still lighting. Lenker, the guitarist Buck Meek, the drummer James Krivchenia and the touring bassist Joshua Crumbly are bathed in earthy reds and browns. The big screens either side of stage remain switched off throughout.
Big Thief’s highly individualistic approach extends to glossing over their most recent album, the excellent Double Infinity (“Dublin-finity” Lenker jokes). They instead front-load the gig with new tracks that showcase the homespun quality of Lenker’s songwriting. These include the ethereal anti-Trump dirge Beautiful World. As Lenker, who grew up in Minnesota, explains in a spoken intro, the tune was inspired by a drive she and her dog took along the US-Mexico border. “The border, it’s a scary place,” she says by way of introduction. “There shouldn’t be a fence there … We gotta break that sh*t down.”
As is often the case with the best groups, Big Thief are full of contradictions. They are clearly a band rather than a solo project for Lenker, at their best when locked in a groove together. Yet the centrepoint of the evening is not a Big Thief hit but a brace of Lenker solo songs, Real House and Anything. Unfiltered and pin-drop stark, they unpack childhood trauma and adult reckoning in a way that is both achingly gorgeous and searingly painful.
Amid all the dread and anxiety, Big Thief are not above the occasional crowd-pleasing moment. The point is underlined when they encore with a run of favourites from Double Infinity. Here they are assisted by the 82-year-old ambient musician Laraaji (a sometime collaborator with Brian Eno back in the day).
After a night of highs, lows and heartbreaking digressions, Big Thief conclude with the languid indie jam of No Fear, a purging sprawl with a spooky fade-out straight out of Radiohead. So they play the game at the end, but only a little, and always on their own mysterious and mischievous terms.
Big Thief performing in Dublin’s 3Arena. Photograph: Debbie Hickey/Getty Images