Big Thief
Double Infinity
4AD
“Like, the earth has mountains and the bedrock and the core and the crust—it’s the rock. Then there’s the roll of the rivers, the ether, the wind, the clouds—these things that flow and blow across the surface of the rock. It reminds us of the idea of two infinities, too, the microcosms and the macro-universe and the dichotomy we live with in every moment, knowing that our bodies will die but we feel this sense of an infinite spirit. That’s rock’n’roll.”
This quote, from a recent interview with Big Thief’s Adrianne Lenker, is a wonderful encapsulation of not only how she tends to talk about pretty much anything, but also how she writes. Words, ideas, and moods seem to flow around her and her band like a stream, less about intention than some cosmic reception to which she seems acutely attuned. Big Thief’s newest record Doubly Infinity is obsessed with words—both their beauty and their inefficiency—and how only by peeling away the layers of protection they provide can we get at something Lenker might call an ecstatic truth.
The fact that the quote above is in direct reference to “rock ’n’ roll” has to do with the band’s initial vision for Double Infinity, which they saw as a return to a more rollicking sound and away from the homespun meandering of their last record, Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You. While this isn’t exactly how Double Infinity came out (there’s nothing close to “Not” anywhere here), there’s something to be said about their shift in focus this time around. Learning that the band spent three weeks in New York City in the dead of winter improvising, jamming, and otherwise noodling around for nearly nine hours a day tracks with songs that sound less like the charming sunset ditties of Dragon and more like otherworldly, jazz-infused transmissions.
There’s also a significant shake-up of personnel, as this marks their first record without founding member and primary bassist Max Oleartchik. While Big Thief is never shy about collaboration, their response was to bring no less than 10 musicians on as collaborators, one of the most significant being new-age pioneer Laraaji who provides an “intuitive vocal melody” in the form of a spellbinding incantation to the chorus of “Grandmother”—incidentally also the first song written by all three remaining members of Big Thief. Laraaji’s wordlessness is a hint at the relationship Lenker seems to have with her own lyrics.
“Words,” the album’s second track which shows off the layered production of Dom Monks early on, is Lenker's attempt at accessing an unconsciousness she sees as being directly at odds with the tools she has for exploring it. “Words are tired and tense, words don’t make sense / Words are feathered and light, words won’t make it right.” The fact that the band follows this up with “Los Angeles,” a discursive flood of imagery that’s sonically most in tune with Big Thief’s last record, reads as her own admission that the camaraderie of everyday life is not, despite her best efforts, something you can share on some subconscious plane, but must exist in a more tactile manner.
So much of Double Infinity is spent in this push and pull. Sometimes, as on the delirious and circular “Happy with You,” Lenker is actively lamenting the need to explain herself at all, dying to be rid of the shackles of rehearsed expression. Elsewhere, among the warbled sweetness of “All Night All Day,” love is proclaimed in the same breath as it is admonished for being a word that can’t possibly convey the feeling behind it. These songs suggest that Lenker’s tendency to ramble and roam—both in her music and in interviews—is more a defense against futility than any sort of definitive proclamation.
Double Infinity is yet another in a lineage of unimpeachable entries in what is one of the more impressive catalogs among current rock bands. Despite the singularity of someone like Adrianne Lenker, Big Thief have yet to say make the same album twice. With its wild percussive passages, expansive soundscapes, and relatively concise tracklist, Double Infinity is really nothing like their last album, which, in turn, differentiated itself from the one before. So much of that rests on Lenker’s ability to be both a welcoming force and an impenetrable one. “Let me be incomprehensible,” she sings on the album’s first single, a request that remains a joy to honor.
