[17] In late 2019,[17] while at a hotel in Copenhagen, Krivchenia presented the band with the concept that they would travel to four different locations: Upstate New York, Topanga Canyon in California, the Sonoran Desert in Arizona, and the Colorado mountains.

[1][17] Mat Davidson, a former member of the Low Anthem and a longtime friend of the band who performs under the moniker Twain, was invited to contribute to the recordings in Arizona.

[32][better source needed] The track's lyrics mention "a dragon in the phone line" and a "new warm mountain where the stone face forms and speaks".

[37] Giving Dragon New Warm Mountain... an "A" grade, veteran critic Robert Christgau expressed overwhelming praise of the lyrics while finding the music to be a vast improvement over the band's previous albums, particularly in its melodic and guitar qualities: "With no loss of Lenker's haunting trademark delicacy, Big Thief is louder here, and rocks more in a clattering kind of way.

"[40] Pitchfork reviewer Andy Cush called the album a "20-song epic of kaleidoscopic invention, striking beauty, and wigged-out humor, rambling far beyond the bounds of their previous work.

"[3] Peter Watts of Uncut hailed it as a "landmark" album, writing that "Adrianne Lenker's genius has fully blossomed on this monumental double LP, which seamlessly blends her ambiguous melodies and absorbing narratives with a yearning for classic Americana and the band's indie-rock leanings.

"[33] James McNair of Mojo praised the album's "admirable ambition" but criticized its lack of stylistic cohesion as being jarring at times.

[43] Helen Brown of The Independent found it superior to the band's many "arty folk rocker" peers while praising Lenker's "questing outward gaze and quirky lyrical choices" and her "beady-eyed magpie knack for catchy melodies.

was impressed by the sonic diversity, observing that the songs "feel in conversation rather than competition, linked by the band's near-mythic symbiosis and Lenker's durable writing.

Her songs are stretched, knotted and vaporized across the record, buried in instrumentation and effects on "Time Escaping" and "Flower of Blood" only to be dusted clean, naked as the day on the spellbinding "The Only Place" or "Promise Is a Pendulum".

"[41] Writing for No Depression, John Amen said it shows Lenker to be "one of the more gifted melodists, subtly versatile singers, and liberated lyricists of her generation", in a showcase of the band's "encyclopedic absorption and seminal reconfiguration of diverse genres and subgenres as well as production styles ranging from lo-fi to hi-fi, from the garage-y to the celestial.

[39] Tony Inglis of The Skinny wrote that the "highs here are some of the highest in the band's prolific discography", and praised the "beguiling" experimentation on the tracks "Heavy Bend", "Blurred View", "Little Things", "Time Escaping", and "Flower of Blood"; Inglis, however, criticized the album's second half, which he felt "[clumps] together without discernible personality" and was worse than any of the songs on Lenker's solo album Songs (2020).

[49] The song had also been awarded the Best New Track distinction in August 2021 by Pitchfork, who commented, "Big Thief perfect their natural ability to turn fleeting moments into unrestrained narrative.