Big|Brave – in grief or in hope
Big|Brave are at once constant and fluid. The core of their sound is the layering of heavy, distorted drones from the guitars of Matthieu Ball and Robin Wattie, the two permanent members of the Montreal band since making their debut with Feral Verdure over a decade ago. But those drones serve more as exploratory beacons than a firm foundation, a light guiding their way toward ever more elastic shapes and circuitous directions. The undeniable throughline in everything they do is feeling, both in terms of the emotional weight of their dense, cacophonous compositions as well as the unmistakable vibrations from their physical presence.
Where past albums such as 2019’s A Gaze Among Them and 2023’s nature morte felt like like an act of expansion, their ninth album in grief or in hope pares back their sound to one based almost entirely around guitar and vocals. Joined by touring bassist Liam Andrews of MY DISCO, Ball and Wattie strip away the drums to draw focus toward the layers of sound they build up, each song rife with myriad nuances even when overwhelming upon first listen. But similar to like-minded texturalists Low on 2018’s Double Negative and 2021’s HEY WHAT, Big|Brave’s act of deconstruction proves both fascinatingly innovative and emotionally powerful.
There’s an almost tactile sensibility to the way the trio stack and blend their instruments, their peals of distortion employed less as blunt instrument than a coarse and prickly landscape, like the wave of fuzz and feedback fed through a phaser on the title track. Though it features no drums, the crackle and vibration of the distortion feels almost like its own form of percussion, rippling beneath Wattie as she invokes the title phrase as if it were a zen koan: “When does one feel the most—in grief or in hope?“
While in grief or in hope does subtract a major element from their approach, it’s not necessarily any farther along the spectrum of minimalism, necessarily—they are, after all, masters of building epic songs from just one chord. They’re as loud and roaring as ever on “the ineptitude of mutual discernment,” but with a more tender, mournful sensibility, an emotional core beneath its armor of noise as Wattie weighs moral judgments: “let no hand do any harm, let no heart err/ would you have done worse or would you’ve done better by far.” Meanwhile, “a shape of shame” is a mesmerizing experience on headphones, a rhythmic boom roaring as if in the distance, ghosts of drums rather than the well defined impact that typically accompanies a Big|Brave song, while an acoustic guitar’s metallic textures ring out over the din. Yet it’s Wattie who provides the most climactic element, her voice rising up into a powerful howl as she sings “my mind works me into a restless state.” And “skin ripper” feels like a companion of sorts to “SKINNED” by Spillings, the side project from Ball and Andrews whose recently released debut feels something like a companion piece to this one. Yet the song’s textural presence is akin to Tim Hecker’s more abrasive moments, its static peaking and lapping against the staid, stoic chords that ring throughout.
Against the imposing backdrop of melody wrought from noise, Wattie reflects onthe “shared experiences of being a human person” as she describes it—life and death, and the titular duality of hope and grief. And in doing so, she wraps her hands around the beating heart inside these squalls of sound, employing Auto-Tune through the powerful sprawl of “an uttering of antipathy” only to peel it away during the song’s coda as hope is crushed by the weight of guilt when she sings, “God only blames me… you only blame me/only blame me/blame me.” In the dense and majestic closer “what may be the kindest way to leave,” Big|Brave reconnect with folk music as they’ve done at different stages of their career, building something like a noise hymn in its meditation on death, Wattie offering an old world meditation of “lord knows what’s in my mind/but the lord knows what is in mind.” It channels something ancient, something universal—but then again Big|Brave do so with everything here in a way, wrestling with the big questions of existence with no easy answers, just a sound loud enough to reverberate in the beyond.
Label: Thrill Jockey
Year: 2026
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Big|Brave : in grief or in hope
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