Lazyhorse

In 2022, Raven Chacon won the Pulitzer Prize for his powerful Voiceless Mass, an evocative work for pipe organ and a large ensemble that scattered players throughout a church. It forced questions about privilege and access, what it meant to occupy a space. A citizen of Navajo Nation, Chacon became the first Native American to win the award, a distinction that instantly elevated his international reputation. As is often the case, though, Chacon had been working for decades, particularly in the noisy recesses of the experimental underground. He had a band with Deerhoof’s John Dieterich, White People Killed Them; collaborated with the likes of Thor Harris and William Fowler Collins; and switched between bass, guitar, and sheets of noise in the demented metal band Tenderizor. Since late 2024, he has returned to band life in Lazyhorse, an astounding band that tweaks the tropes of country and spaghetti Western scores with a hint of malice.

Lazyhorse is a six-piece, fronted by two remarkable singers: Mali Obomsawin, the Abenaki First Nation bassist and composer who leads her own band at Big Ears, and Miram Elhajli, a New York folk singer with Venezuelan roots and a Lomax-like curiosity about the world of sound. Steve Hammond, whose résumé spans psychedelic metal and hardcore country, joins on lap steel. The core members of the remarkable theater-and-music project The Living Earth Show—percussionist Andy Meyerson and guitarist Travis Andrews—anchor Lazyhorse. Their early songs brood and bewitch. “Last Day” upshifts from country-western melancholy to doom metal roar and down again, while the pointillist percussion and spoken-word exhortations of “Cutsie” feels like a fever dream drawn from our warped reality. Lazyhorse is a fascinating new endeavor from a world-class cast of players and thinkers, and Big Ears is honored to present one of its earliest shows.