The debut album from Big Thief's close-quarters quartet of indie darlings is performed face to face with their listeners, maintaining eye contact and building a relationship of trust and comfort the entire time. The record flows from wholesome smiles of reminiscence to abstract pools of melancholy, but these mood swings are never jolting, swaying back and forth with rhythm and flexibility like a pair of tire swings dangling in a backyard breeze.

From the title track's love triangle that has been scratched into a picnic table in chords of rambunctious country to the bittersweet homesickness of Vegas whose two choruses intertwine like a möbius strip, from the psychedelic breakdown that rips Real Love and Humans limb from limb with a bottled-up outburst of feral catharsis to the woollen sweater tenderness of Little Arrow and Velvet Ring, Masterpiece is as human as they come.