Pour yourself a Sleepytime® Extra and let these winter warmers throw a blanket over you by the fireplace. Curated by: Numero Group

Fall/Winter (Numero Group)

Cry Love

Express Your Love

Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You

The Only Place

No One Waved Goodbye

So Much Water

A simple, sad neo-folk track for my Great Aunt - made with Suno v4.5

Gone Too Soon

This mantra of the 20th Tara (known in Tibetan as Tara Ritrö Loma Gyönma and in Sankskrit as Tara Śabarī (sometimes spelled as Shabari or Shavari or Śavarī/) is a healing mantra that protects against disease and contagion.  This mantra has both wrathful and peaceful aspects: wrathfully subduing the invasive energies of contagion and deadly epidemics and pacifying sickness.  

OṂ TĀRE TUTTĀRE TURE NAMA TĀRE MANOHARA HŪṂ HARA SVĀHĀ

This is a powerful healing mantra and I am grateful to all of my teachers and fellow practitioners and musicians who helped make this recording possible. And to Lasha Mutual for her generosity in allowing me to include her painting of the 20th Tara in my cover art. This graphic t is meant to evoke those tiny bodhi-leaf thangkas from Tibet and India. 

CREDITS:
Lee Mirabai Harrington - vocals, arrangement, keyboard
Ben Leinbach - guitar, synth
Sasrika Randimal - Bansuri flutes

Nature Chorus: The birds, frogs and insects of the forests of Woodstock, NY (the original lands of the Munsee Lenape) and Kerela, India 

Graphics: Lee Harrington, using an illustration of Tara Ritrö Loma Gyönma by Lasha Mutual. https://lashamutual.com/


May all be free from disease and contagion.


MANTRA OF THE 20TH TARA (Tara Ritrö Loma Gyönma | Tara Śabarī)

A song for the prince and my king, my dad. The words remind me of me and my father’s story.

Changes

Souvlaki

Alison

Broken Girl

August 10

Soft Sounds from Another Planet

Till Death

Contemporary Movement

Me and the Birds

30 miles west of El Paso, surrounded by 3,000 acres of pecan orchards and only a stone’s throw from the Mexican border, the band Big Thief (a.k.a. Adrianne Lenker, Buck Meek, Max Oleartchik, and James Krivchenia) set up their instruments as close together as possible to capture their most important collection of songs yet. The band had only just finished work on their 3rd album, U.F.O.F. -“the celestial twin”- days before in a cabin studio in the woods of Washington State. Now it was time to birth U.F.O.F.’s sister album -“the earth twin”- Two Hands. 

In sharp contrast to the wet environment of the U.F.O.F. session, the southwestern Sonic Ranch studio was chosen for its vast desert location. The 105-degree weather boiled away any clinging memories of the green trees and wet air of the previous session. Two Hands had to be completely different— an album about the Earth and the bones beneath it. The songs were recorded live with almost no overdubs. All but two songs feature entirely live vocal takes, leaving Adrianne’s voice suspended above the mix in dry air, raw and vulnerable as ever. Where U.F.O.F. layered mysterious sounds and effects for levitation, Two Hands grounds itself on dried-out, cracked desert dirt. 

Anybody who has borne witness to Big Thief in the wild will find songs they recognize here. Much of the album’s tracks (“The Toy”, “Those Girls”, “Shoulders”, “Not”, “Cut My Hair”) have been live staples for years. “Two Hands has the songs that I’m the most proud of; I can imagine myself singing them when I’m old,” says Adrianne. “Musically and lyrically, you can’t break it down much further than this. It’s already bare-bones.” 

Lyrically this can be felt in the poetic blur of the internal and external. These are political songs without political language. They explore the collective wounds of our Earth. Abstractions of the personal hint at war, environmental destruction, and the traumas that fuel it. Lyrics like “And the blood of the man who killed my mother with his hands is in me/ it’s in me/ in my veins” are genuine attempts to point the listener towards the very real dangers that face our mother planet. When Adrianne sings “Please wake up,” she’s talking directly to the audience. “Attention is power,” she says. “I believe you can manifest something on the other side of the world just by using your power well.” 

Engineer Dom Monks and producer Andrew Sarlo, who were both behind U.F.O.F., capture the live energy as instinctually and honestly as possible. Sarlo teamed up with James Krivchenia to mix the album, where they sought to emphasize raw power and direct energy inherent in the takes. The journey of a song from the stage to the record is often a difficult one. Big Thief’s advantage is their bond and loving center as a chosen family. They spend almost 100% of their lives together working towards a sound that they all agree upon. A band with this level of togetherness is increasingly uncommon. If you ask drummer James Krivchenia, bassist Max Oleartchik or guitarist Buck Meek how they write their parts, they will describe—passionately—the experience of hearing Adrianne present a new song, listening intently for hints of parts that already exist in the ether and the undertones to draw out with their respective instruments. It is an honor to give life to these intricacies. 

With raw power and intimacy, Two Hands folds itself gracefully into Big Thief’s impressive discography. This body of work grows deeper and more inspiring with each new album. While you listen, let your own two hands rest in front of your body with palms facing inward and see what power grows between them.

The Only Place

Big Thief

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