When it comes to chemistry in indie rock, Big Thief is Alfred Nobel. It’s the No. 1 quality fans have zeroed in on from the beginning. I was first drawn to their magnetic camaraderie on 2016’s Masterpiece, which I adored for “the intangible feeling” of hearing skilled musicians come together and “become something greater than the sum of their parts.” Even Big Thief’s detractors have noted this unique closeness while mocking their polyamorous press photos, where they huddle together so tightly they resemble a literal four-headed creature.
Big Thief’s two frontline members, singer-songwriter Adrianne Lenker and guitarist Buck Meek, were married briefly in the mid-2010s. But that romantic partnership was eventually overshadowed by the musical union formed with drummer James Krivchenia and bassist Max Oleartchik. As the band found its footing with 2017’s Capacity and the remarkable 2019 double shot of U.F.O.F. and Two Hands — and developed into a thrillingly adventurous, though occasionally haphazard, live act — each member stood out as an essential part of the overall whole. Their music was a delicate Jenga tower held in place by each well-placed piece. You could pick out the individual contributions, but Big Thief inhaled and exhaled as a singular organism. By 2022’s epochal Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You, they could play the sound of the room as well as the songs themselves, as they invited the listener into a circle of friendship that felt uncommonly intimate.
But what happens when the circle is broken? That’s the dilemma of Double Infinity, their first album in three years and sixth LP overall. In 2024, they announced the departure of Oleartchik, a move they insisted was unrelated to the controversial booking (and subsequent cancelation) of two 2022 shows in the bassist’s hometown of Tel Aviv. In a recent interview with Vulture, they framed the separation more like a romantic breakup than a band PR decision. “There’ll never be anything like that again, like what we were,” Lenker admitted. Then she added, “We took a year alone and started dating.”
To carry over the metaphor, awkwardly: Big Thief have since transitioned to full-on musical bigamy. After trying to record as a trio, fruitlessly, they entered New York City’s Record Plant with a small army of collaborators, including 82-year-old ambient multi-instrumentalist Laraaji as well as several percussionists and backing singers, swelling their ranks to 13 musicians. (Joshua Crumbly is currently playing bass.) In the studio, they jammed for nine hours a day, and over the course of three weeks carved out nine songs. And those tracks ultimately diverged from their usual crunchy, folk-rock sound. Guitars were de-emphasized in the mix in favor of an amorphous wash of loops, samples, zither drones, and repetitive, mantra-like lyrical and melodic motifs.
It’s a marked reinvention that recalls bold pivots like R.E.M.’s late-’90s album Up, which also arrived after the departure of a core band member turned them into a three-piece augmented by auxiliary musicians. R.E.M. similarly attempted to push beyond their trademark folk rock by embracing decidedly non-folk-rock elements (drum machines, squawky synths, downbeat choruses).
On Double Infinity, Big Thief sound questing and expansive, purposely blurring instruments together to create gauzy soundscapes. It’s an ambitious, sumptuous, somewhat disorienting, and vaguely frustrating stew. In terms of sounding nothing like their previous albums, it is undoubtedly a progression. Whether it is an improvement (or up to their usual standards) is less definitive. I can admire certain parts of this record, but after playing it for weeks, I still can’t fully warm to it. It’s liquid-y and intangible, lacking the tactile flesh-and-blood sturdiness I expect from this band. It’s not a bad album by any means; It’s a solid effort that doesn’t come close to blowing me away, and I’m used to this band blowing me away. If Dragon felt like an epic bear hug, listening to Double Infinity is like trying, over and over, to embrace a cloud of dry-ice smoke.
There’s an interesting moment in that Vulture interview where they’re asked about whether they have “streamlined” their sound for a wider audience. An odd accusation given that Big Thief is, on record at least, literally larger than ever. “We got together in a room and jammed,” Lenker shot back, with palpable defensiveness. “Is that moneymaking?”
I wouldn’t describe Double Infinity as “streamlined.” And it certainly doesn’t come off like a bid for mainstream pop exposure. Big Thief is as idiosyncratic as they have ever been. Lyrically, the songs address the weight of the past, whether that baggage takes a physical form (the letters and photographs of the hazy “Incomprehensible,” the full “picture box” from the more robust and winning “Los Angeles”) or a spiritual one (the love and pain Lenker pledges to turn “into rock and roll” in “Grandmother”). The latter track is the best song on the album, and it benefits from the jammy approach to songwriting. It doesn’t carry the punch of past highlights like “Not” and “Time Escaping,” but the slow build sets an entrancing mood over the course of six mesmerizing minutes. The same can be said of “No Fear,” an even longer jam that unfolds like a quietly intense prayer, with Lenker seeking a “mind so clear, mind so free.”
It’s a shame that the heaviness of the words is sometimes undercut by the soft-focus sonics. Again, Big Thief hasn’t “gone pop,” exactly, though the rawness of Masterpiece certainly feels like a distant memory. When I interviewed Meek in 2023, he hinted that Big Thief might be moving in a “screamo” direction, an intimation of a more aggressive turn he reiterated elsewhere. But that clearly didn’t carry through to this record, which at times veers into languid adult-contemporary territory. I’m thinking specifically of the least successful tracks — the sweet but monotonous love song “Happy With You” and the equally cringy “All Night All Day,” an ode to oral sex where Lenker praises God “or whatever made the mouth / to drink the pleasure.”
These are, it pains me to say, among the worst songs to ever appear on a Big Thief record. (I can remember Big Thief records with zero bad songs.) And they sound even weaker when placed next to “How Could I Have Known,” the most “conventionally Big Thief-sounding” song on the album. Over a relatively stripped-down mix of rollicking drums and campfire harmonies, Lenker relates a melancholy farewell to an ex-lover. “How could I have known / in that moment / what we’d turn into,” she sings.
It’s an echo of the past underscoring the confusion of the present, and coming at the end of the record, it’s a tacit acknowledgment of how much remains unsettled for Big Thief. All the allusions to past mementos and broken relationships read as attempts to process that the “classic” version of this band won’t, as Lenker herself admits, ever exist ever again. Like much of Double Infinity, “How Could I Have Known” sounds like trying to move on while struggling to imagine what “moving on” means. For now, adding so many extra players has somehow made them feel smaller. Big Thief has been a great band for many years now. What they’re turning into remains unclear.
Double Infinity is out 9/5 via 4AD. Find more information here.
