It’s amazing to think there was a time when BIG|BRAVE performed as an acoustic project. During the early 2010s, the then-nascent band were a folk duo. Their evolution since – from duo to trio – has dramatically broadened the band’s scope. During this time, the Canadians have traversed most of experimental rock’s many hues, but drone and doom metal remain their specialities. With their latest album, there’s another new addition, that of longtime touring bassist Liam Andrews. BIG|BRAVE are sonically expanding once more.
While not vastly different from some of the band’s previous work, their tenth album – ‘in grief or in hope’ – does lean liberally into the abstract. While BIG|BRAVE do remain within the ballpark of folk-tinged drone music, there aren’t many riffs here. Previous releases, such as 2024’s magnificent ‘A Chaos Of Flowers’, were undeniably experimental. But the music was consistently underpinned by easily identifiable riffs. While there are some riffs on ‘in grief or in hope’, they do not constitute the album’s defining features.
The band don’t play their instruments on ‘in grief or in hope’; they interact with them. It’s a lofty claim, but one that’s evidenced by the album’s credits, which list every musician as “playing” the amplifier. Take note of this: a tool used to make an instrument louder is now the instrument itself. The result; noise. And, for the most part, it’s actually rather beautiful.
Take ‘what may be the kindest way to leave’, the album’s opener and, at just over 7-minutes, its scene-setter. The piece is built around a distorted soundscape that is suspended in motion; quivering underneath its own weight. It possesses a quiet heftiness. To this end, BIG|BRAVE have tamed noise. Despite the constant threat that it will escape them, ‘in grief or in hope’ remains remarkably controlled under their watchful stewardship.
Their skilful compositional approaches lead also to the hazy soundscapes that underscore ‘holding tongue’, as the gentle ringing of strings swell with each dizzying release. It adds a protean quality to proceedings; equally pleasant on the ear as it is difficult to predict.
The counterpart to all this is Robin Wattie’s voice. The noise of the album is all-consuming, but Wattie ensures everything remains grounded. Her vocals are intimate. Whether distantly obscured behind growing instrumental swirls in ‘the ineptitude for mutual discernment’ or upfront and wounded during ‘a shape of shame’ – her performances here are frequently breathtaking.
The sound of Wattie’s vocals is further enhanced by the content of her lyrics. Grief and hope are the album’s underlying emotions, but the expressing of these emotions is impressionistic – there aren’t many lyrics across the album in general. This is a mixed blessing. While there are occasions when the brevity of Wattie’s words reads like an indecipherable extract from ‘Finnegans Wake’, BIG|BRAVE do frequently produce fractions of sentences that are themselves pure poetry. Simple phrases become elevated by Wattie’s expressive voice: “I am tested while you get to walk away” from ‘verdure’, for example, is suitably chilling.
BIG|BRAVE’s purposefully, and mostly successfully, vague approach to lyrics neatly centres on the album’s core themes, but they are perhaps best explored on ‘skin ripper’. “The truth of grief lies in what is left of hope” is a lyric that effectively summarises what ‘in grief or in hope’ stands for. It is a lyric that invites meditation. Is hope the antidote to grief, or is grief itself so painful precisely because it thwarts all hope? By adopting an ambiguity to their lyrics, BIG|BRAVE allow us as listeners to ask these questions. As if to emulate this, ‘skin ripper’ is then bolstered further by a shrewd approach to tempo, whereby rhythmic undulations ebb and flow between the conflicting yet strangely intertwined dual emotions.
This all then culminates with the album’s closing title track, which bluntly asks: “when does one feel the most/is it in grief or is it in hope.” It is apropos that only this far into the album do BIG|BRAVE fully form such a manifesto. The album subsequently becomes a live self-led journey that aims to uncover the complexities of these feelings. Heaving crushes of distortion accompany this resolution as a solution is finally reached.
And then… the album ends. Abruptly, and with no fanfare, it simply finishes. It’s an unusual finale that is, intentionally perhaps, underwhelming. But having traversed mountains of distortion and an even heavier emotional foundation, such a unanimous conclusion is, while odd, strangely satisfying. And strangely hopeful too.
BEN WILLIAMS
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