Rating: 7.5/10
If there’s one band that can encapsulate love and other complex feelings into an album, it’s Big Thief.
It’s been doing this for almost a decade, yet its sound is as robust and interesting as ever. Its new record, “Double Infinity,” comes after its highly acclaimed 2022 album, “Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You.”
Since the release of that record, the band has undergone some changes, notably the departure of bassist Max Oleartchik. Despite his absence, the folk trio gets by just fine.
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Lead vocalist and guitarist Adrianne Lenker continues to be on another lyrical level than her peers. Accompanied by longtime musical collaborator and guitarist Buck Meek and drummer James Krivchenia, the band delivers some of the best folk-rock you can get nowadays.
The record opens with “Incomprehensible,” a song that Big Thief fans have been begging the trio to release since it first performed the song at Lowlands music festival in 2024. Lenker writes in a way that embraces growing older, something often stigmatized in society.
From “the soft and lovely silvers” of hair to wrinkles “like the river,” Lenker flips ageist rhetoric and shines beauty on the process of aging. Behind strong drums and a slightly distorted guitar, the track is a strong opener that lays the groundwork for the rest of the album.
“Words” is one of the less wordy tracks on this record. It lets the rhythm of the guitar take the reins as Lenker sings quietly along at the beginning of the track. As the chorus arrives, Lenker’s vocal performance matches the intensity of the song. We also get one of the gratifying guitar breaks that make Big Thief so irresistible.
This track touches on, well, words. How beautiful they can be, yet incomplete. There is no verbiage strong enough to truly capture how one feels, which is where music and sound step in. Luckily for the band, it tends to be good with both words and sound.
“Los Angeles” is a power ballad about love. When sharing the song’s meaning via Instagram, Meek described it as “… a song about enduring love, beyond friendship and romance, lasting through many forms, becoming unbreakable.”
Whether it’s following someone wherever life takes them to dreaming with them, this track showcases the depth and power love can have.
Sonically, the track does not sound any different from the first two tracks. However, the listening experience is by no means tiring. The lyrics keep listeners engaged, and the guitars and drums are so good that you can’t help but be satisfied with what you are listening to.
“All Night All Day” is one of the more promiscuous songs on the record. From its opening line, “All night, all day/ I could go down on you,” we see that we have transitioned from talking about love’s transcendent properties to its more physical forms.
When asked by The i Paper about this track, Lenker described it as “…a spiritual lovemaking song. It’s taking the shame out of lovemaking. There’s so much shame in our bodies, and in sex, in our culture.”
With the track’s layered vocals, quiet violins and lyrics referencing one’s room as a “temple,” the song feels quite spiritual indeed.
Title-track “Double Infinity” is all of the record’s best moments in one track. We’re greeted with Lenker’s falsetto, a hardy theme and Big Thief’s characteristic guitar-drum duo.
“Double Infinity” tackles the passage of time in reference to nature. While there is uncertainty that accompanies time, Lenker finds comfort in knowing she has love to anchor her down.
“Deep within the center of/ The picture is the one I love/ The eye behind the essence/ Still unmovable, unchanging,” Lenker sings.
“No Fear” and “Grandmother” stand as the longest tracks on the album. “No Fear” has some of the most head-bobbing bass lines on this record. Behind the contorted sound of an electric guitar, the song repeats the same lyrics throughout its entirety, but sonically builds on itself. It makes for an easy listen despite the song pushing seven minutes.
“Happy with You” and “How Could I Have Known” round out the record.
“Happy with You” is a celebration of the love Lenker has found. With lyrics such as “Happy with you/ Why do I need to explain myself,” Lenker doesn’t explain herself further than that. The lyrics are incredibly repetitive and beg to end sooner than it does. However, she gets her point across wonderfully.
As listeners reach the end of the record, “How Could I Have Known” shows the band at its best. Proclaiming love and its infinite reach, we arrive at a point where it feels like we cannot describe love further than this.
There really is not much else to say about this record or about Big Thief. It has cemented itself as the best of the best in the folk world.
The band is confident in its sound, allowing Lenker to tackle new themes such as aging and lovemaking. However, this leaves room for further exploration for the band, both sonically and thematically.
