The world is not exactly suffering from a drought of vaguely rootsy, slightly folk-influenced indie rock bands. There are a lot of those motherfuckers out there right now. It can't be easy for them. We're living through an era when any music, to get noticed, needs some kind of narrative hook, some elevator pitch. And a band, even a great band, can slip through the cracks if it doesn't have one of those. Consider the case of Big Thief, a Brooklyn four-piece led by Adrianne Lenker, a Minnesota transplant who made some singer-songwriter music, first on her own and then with eventual Big Thief bandmate Buck Meek, before putting the band together. Just one year ago, Big Thief released their debut album Masterpiece. In retrospect, it's a perfectly lovely piece of work. We here at Stereogum ignored it completely. I don't even know why. Sometimes, that just happens. Our bad. But no, in almost no time at all, Big Thief are back with Capacity, and their new album is a huge leap forward in just about every possible way, a record made with enormous confidence and intuition and empathy. And so this time, they do have a narrative hook, and the narrative hook is this: Big Thief are extremely fucking good at what they're doing, and they will be ignored no more.