Following two acclaimed studio albums that broke the band onto the independent and folk charts, Big Thief returned in 2019 with two very different Billboard 200-charting full-lengths: the artfully cosmic U.F.O.F. and the raw and jagged Two Hands. Using nature as an inspiration for those dissimilarities, the former album was recorded in the wooded Northwest, while Two Hands was tracked in stifling desert conditions in Texas. With the resulting contrasts in mind, their fifth LP, Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You, is a sprawling double album (with a title to match) recorded in four different regions of the U.S. -- Topanga Canyon, Tuscan, the Colorado Rockies, and the Catskills -- with a slate of accomplished engineers overseen by the band's drummer, James Krivchenia. (While this is his first outing as main producer for Big Thief, Krivchenia previously produced albums for himself and Mega Bog.) The results are even more mercurial than these conditions might suggest. Cut down from 45 to 20 songs and intended as a showcase for Adrianne Lenker's songwriting range as well as the band's continued growth as a unit, DNWMIBIY plays up contrasts with its sequencing. It opens, for instance, with the top-notch, sparsely arranged "Change," a poignant meditation on life, death, and jealousy. That song is followed by the relatively chaotic, experimental "Time Escaping," whose more anxious melody is accompanied by prepared acoustic guitars, synths, and a kit that's played on and off drumheads. Elsewhere, the spacey, throbbing, deadpan diversion "Blurred View" leads straight into lively hoedown track "Red Moon" featuring Mat Davidson (Twain, the Low Anthem) on fiddle. Embracing conspicuous drum machine, the low-key tour anthem "Wake Me Up to Drive" is followed by the entirely solo "Promise Is a Pendulum," a song whose poetic, tender disposition is almost startling by contrast ("I could never build the shadow/Between your cheek and your eyeâ?¦. The canopy of lashes/With the softness of ashes"). Along the way, further explorations include a trippy, reflective title track that has pedal steel, synth, and icicles among its instrumentation; singalong "No Reason," featuring Richard Hardy (Carole King) on flute; and if the odd meter of "Little Things" seems hard to pin down, it's because, per Krivchenia, it consists of an "evolving free time signature" that developed into a light groove that effectively left the band guessing at the location of downbeats. Like the vast majority of the tracks on Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You, it works. ~ Marcy Donelson