For Big Thief, the indie-rock powerhouse based in Brooklyn, N.Y., love has always been just as mystifying as their music. Over their 10 years as a band, vocalist-guitarist Adrianne Lenker, guitarist Buck Meek and drummer James Krivchenia have delved into the complexities of relationships in their music — and the pain that comes with them. Now, on their sixth studio album, “Double Infinity,” released on Sept. 5, the band views love through a different lens. On their first album since the departure of their former bassist Max Oleartchik in 2024, Big Thief turns inward, seeing love as something healing, delicate and eternal. While employing a bigger sound than ever before, Big Thief has never felt more powerful and true to themselves.
The album begins with “Incomprehensible,” a haunting ballad that establishes the interrogative tone of the rest of the record. A scintillating metal scrape gives way to Lenker’s voice, which lies behind the warbling instrumentals. As her words rise and fall, Lenker sends the listener into the unknown in the chorus: “Incomprehensible / Incomprehensible / Incomprehensible, let me be,” Lenker sings. For Big Thief, time — in addition to love — is almost impossible to understand. As Lenker paints picturesque scenes of walking through nature, she contemplates the division between herself and her surroundings: “In two days it’s my birthday and I’ll be thirty-three / That doesn’t really matter next to eternity,” Lenker sings. The band floats through the world around them as they drift through time: gently and ceaselessly.
“Los Angeles” is next, beginning with a chorus of laughter before slipping into a beautiful meditation on what it means to be connected. Lenker sings to a relationship that remains despite being separated: “Even without speaking / You sang for me,” Lenker sings. Her voice is surprisingly strong — a departure from the soft, whispery incantations of albums like their 2016 “Masterpiece.” This track is a thesis for the record as a whole. Big Thief sees love as something greater than themselves: an almost spiritual, everlasting tie between two souls. And the love they point toward is not singular, as it encompasses all the relationships people move through in their lives with lovers, with friends and with family.
Lenker reminisces, surprised by the passage of time: “Feels like it’s been ten years, has it only been two years?” And with time, Big Thief has found forgiveness, letting bygones be bygones: “We’re finally in a good place, meeting face-to-face,” Lenker sings. It is easy to get caught up in the expansiveness of a metropolis like Los Angeles, but despite any physical distance growing between the band and those that they love, there is no figurative distance to be found.
“All Night All Day” begins with the buoyancy of a 2000s pop ballad. Lenker brings forth her familiar folksy voice, singing of the small, intimate moments between her and a lover. She sings to the complexity of romance: “Swallow poison, swallow sugar / Sometimes they taste the same / But I know your love is neither.” Her voice is beautifully layered, and so are the band’s emotions. The relationship that Lenker sings about helps her feel again, even if it hurts. And for a band that has gone through many changes, including Lenker and Meek’s divorce in 2018, pain has been both a source of inspiration and connection.
On the title track, “Double Infinity,” Big Thief invokes a spiritual edge. Lenker describes how when she looks in the mirror, she sees herself as a sketch, as something almost translucent. But while she is in flux, the world around her is solid and ever-changing, rippling forth like water. A single high, vibrating note hums throughout the track, as eternal as the seconds that slip by. The band shows their lyrical chops as Lenker returns to the near-esoteric descriptions that have been a hallmark of their previous works: “The eye behind the essence / Still unmovable, unchanging.”
“Grandmother” is the strongest track of “Double Infinity.” Moving from an electric intro, Lenker describes feeling out of place: “It’s been strange, dancing at the bar,” Lenker sings. But this is not a track about a lover. Rather, it is about family, a recurring theme of the record as a whole. Between intricate percussion and a subtle whooshing sound that underlays Lenker’s voice, she gently coos, “Grandmother / Sleep tight, sleep loose.”
The track also features Laraaji, an 82-year-old multi-instrumentalist. He sings strongly, almost religiously, throughout the song. Their voices meld together in a joyous cacophony as Lenker sings to the power of music: “Gonna turn it all into rock and roll.” Whatever pain the band faces, they take it in stride, channeling it into art. Here, their art is wholly unique to their discography, singularly impactful in the landscape Lenker paints and the vocal layers that pulse through the tender instrumentals.
The last track on the album, “How Could I Have Known,” captures a similar nostalgic, bittersweet feeling present throughout this project. Beginning with a gentle violin and trotting melody — reminiscent of an ABBA song — Lenker describes how her partner helped her find herself, “I was alone in that moment / When I first met you.”
But where that relationship may have caused Lenker pain, it also let her heal. Opening wounds does not always mean scars will form. Sometimes, the band sees bloodletting as a necessary release. Lenker sings to a higher power: “And they say time’s the fourth dimension / They say everything lives and dies,” contemplating her own maturity, years into her career. The song concludes with a gentle electric guitar solo, encapsulating the multiple dimensions in which Big Thief occupies.
They are gentle — the epitome of indie-folk melodic perfection — but they speak to the strongest things: love, pain and the oppressive threat of time. With “Double Infinity,” they have never been fiercer or more singularly poignant.
Hunter Buchheit (he/him) (28B) is majoring in U.S. History and Business. He loves writing about music, Emory events and politics, and in his free time enjoys playing piano, running and spending hours crafting the perfect Spotify playlist.
