The second song on Big Thief’s new record is aptly named ‘Shark Smile’ – it starts with teeth. Actually, it doesn’t start in earnest until about one full minute in. The first 45 seconds are basically a distorted electric guitar line coupled with drum rolls and fills – a delectable din. The whole section begins by making sense but quickly descends into a chaos of twisted sound waves and crash cymbals. From within this cloud of noise comes a clean electric guitar sound with a simple rock n roll groove on the drums. This, in essence, is the whole story. A great noise followed by a quiet moment of understanding.
“She was a shark smile in a yellow van,” Adrianne Lenker, songwriter and band leader, croons at us. She’s beckoning us to enter the world of this short, passionate romance. In just under four minutes Shark Smile takes us on a wild ride. The guitar and the vocals are so compressed that they’re almost tinny, making them sound as though they’re coming out of a car radio. This masterfully puts the listeners right in the back seat of that yellow van, watching Lenker fall for a shark smile – equal parts promise and peril. And just when we’ve settled into the rhythm, feeling the musty car seat and the wind in our hair, the chorus comes in the window like a midwestern breeze.
“And she said, woo
Baby, take me.
And I said, woo
Baby, take me too.”
They tear down the highway, and we’re with them “90 miles down the road of a dead end dream”. The first two verses fly by, just like the beginning of any great love story. Dizzying, fast, dangerous, addictive. Then, out of nowhere, that menacing, distorted guitar from the intro returns in the second chorus, warning us that we’re headed too fast down this highway. And so it is. The noisome guitar builds slowly, a crescendo of impending disaster, until finally it overtakes the car and the song as we all go tumbling over the double line and her lover is “impaled as I reached my hand for the guardrail”. Lenker repeats, in disbelief, those final words “The guardrail. The guardrail…” The irony of it all hits us like a semitrailer on the wrong side of the road. That which was supposed to keep the two lovers safe is that which ends up splashing their blood all over the highway. Lenker survives. The lover does not.
The verse ends, abruptly, with a final chorus, bringing home the point of it all. The violent end, the disaster, that’s not what matters. The distorted guitar is gone, and all that’s left is that car radio chorus, and it’s still singing
“And she said, woo
Baby, take me.
And I said, woo
Baby, take me too.”
