Big Thief

Debuted by Big Thief during a handful of shows in 2022 and turned into a fixture of the 2023 spring tour setlists, “Vampire Empire” has finally found its definitive studio incarnation, released by the Brooklyn band on July 19th across all streaming platforms (a 7″ is due out on October 20th instead). Ever since its unexpected live debut, the song had been hailed by fans and the US press alike, and its performance on Stephen Colbert's The Late Show in late February was nothing short of triumphant. Just as triumphant, for that matter, was its appearance amid the emotional outpouring of Big Thief's latest European tour, in which, to be fair, the batch of unreleased songs was remarkably generous and thrilling.

“Vampire Empire” could have been, and perhaps still can be, one of the high points of the American band's forthcoming LP, but releasing it as a single was necessary. Necessary because anyone who fell instantly in love with this song could no longer live without being able to play it on an endless loop of ascetic emotion. Necessary also because Big Thief are and have always been a band in flux, and the dazzling form they've shown on their latest brilliant studio effort and on stage deserved to be celebrated somehow.

It's precisely the overflowing electro-acoustic amalgam typical of the band's live performances that gets distilled to its essence in this recording. “Vampire Empire” is in fact a powerful release of tension: addressing the toxic dynamics of attraction and depletion within a relationship, it represents their redemption and marks the reclaiming of that vital energy the narrating voice seems to have been robbed of in the first verse:

Watching TV tired, bleeding on the bed

The milk has just expired, all the leaves are dead

I’m not quiet, you’ve been quiet, just receiving what you said

Reeling, feeding, feeling filled by everything you fed

I see you as you see yourself through all the books you read

Overwhelmed with guilt and realizing the disease

Apathy, disconnection and the specter of a drug comedown collide right from the start, though, with Adrianne Lenker's extraordinary vocal performance. Laid over a steady percussive beat, the songwriter's voice takes hold of the scene through constant shifts in pitch and register that heighten the sonic textures of the lyrics and their markedly rhythmic quality. The peak of this feverish delivery coincides, in the third and final verse, with the realization that the lyrical self must break free from the “vampire empire” it has fallen prey to: Adrianne screams just as we've heard her do live, and into that scream pour rage, frustration and a whole inner turmoil that finds healing in cathartic release.

At the heart of this arc of self-reaffirmation and a sustainable redefinition of personal boundaries, an explicit erotic charge, not unlike certain Indigo Sparke lyrics, softens the struggle nonetheless:

We jump into the pond, then we come under the shower

You lay upon my pillow and you open like a flower

I wanted to see you naked, I wanted to hear you scream

Wanted to kiss your skin and your everything

I wanted to be your woman, I wanted to be your man

I wanted to be the one that you could understand

The second verse of “Vampire Empire” thus becomes the point of departure for regaining relational balance through the union of eros and philia, of body and spirit. A union that couldn't have sealed the triumphs of a band any better - a band I hope will keep amazing and astonishing us for a long time to come, because there's no going back from their “vampire empire”.

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19/04/2026