After a brief hiatus, Big Thief is back. However, a lot has changed for the band since their last album was released. Adrianne Lenker, the frontwoman and lead singer of the band, recently went out on her own to release the solo album Bright Future, where she took time to explore herself. Lead bassist Max Oleartchik also left the band in the last year due to “interpersonal reasons”. So, the question is: Will this reunion work? Is the magic still there?
Their sixth and newest album, released on September 5, is called Double Infinity, comprising 9 indie folk-rock tracks. It opens with Incomprehensible. In this track, strings and sparkling chimes in the background complement Lenker’s echoing lyricism. She sings about missing her flight, and taking the time to drive with a lover, eventually revealing the worries of aging that society has pushed upon her, singing, “I’m afraid of getting older”, that’s what I’ve learned to say/Society has given me the words to think that way/The message spirals, “Don’t get saggy, don’t get grey”. Already in the first track, Lenker delves deep into important topics, such as how women in media are expected to portray themselves as young and pretty. This hits even harder coming from her raw, thin voice.
Some other standout tracks of the album include “Words”, “Double Infinity”, and “Grandmother ft. Laraaji”. In “Words”, the relatable experience of just words not being enough to express your feelings is explored, also lightly touching on a fear of being alone with your thoughts, creating an understandable and moving listen set against a background of upbeat zither, drums, and guitar. In Double Infinity, the title track, Lenker is at her poetic best, singing lyrics like “And time moves like water falls/Unrelentin’, cascadin’/The trees on fire, the rivers flood/And all the banks are soaked in blood” and “Through the crystal cage of agin’/Longin’ to go back again/To be someone I’ve never been”, serenading us with sentiments of regret and eternity. In Grandmother, Laraaji’s wordless vocalizations warm up the piece and add an element of longing to Lenker’s verses as she sings of love and pain, and maybe more importantly, how she’s “Gonna turn it all into rock and roll”. The sounds all blend together into a lovely 6-minute composition, which has a grandmother-y tone – comforting and uplifting.
However, there are also places where this album falls short. While No Fear is a perfectly fine song in its own right, Lenker’s whispery, prayer-like repetition of the same four lyrics (There is no fear, mind so clear, mind so free/There is no time, round like a lime, destiny/There is nowhere, no table, no chair, no country/There is no face that isn’t in your face, there to see) doesn’t add much to the collection of songs. While it gets more interesting towards the end with the addition of sparkling chimes and choppy sounds, it still ends up sounding like something you would expect from a new artist performing at a pub in the winter, and the obscure lyrics, while perhaps meant to have some hidden meaning, are undecipherable to the average listener. “Happy With You” has a similar problem, repeating the words “happy with you” and “poison shame” so much that they stop sounding like real phrases, and completely lose meaning, achieving the exact opposite of any emphasis potentially intended. “How Could I Have Known” sounds almost like a country tune from a boring movie soundtrack, and, in my opinion, does nothing to end the album with a bang.
In conclusion, Double Infinity highlights Big Thief’s new sound, soulful and indie, poetic and full of human emotion, in a compilation of tracks that feels intentional and moving. While some songs don’t quite hit the mark, the ones that do really do, making it definitely worth a listen.
