Big Thief - Double Infinity (2025)

Big Thief's last two albums leaned into lead vocalist Adrianne Lenker and lead guitarist Buck Meek's folk-country roots. But Big Thief are, at their core, a rock band, and Double Infinity is a rock album—a return to the type of simmering songs, crackling with electric heat beneath their soft surfaces, that filled their first three records.

Lenker, Meek, and drummer James Krivchenia recorded Double Infinity over the course of three winter weeks at Power Station—the famed Midtown Manhattan studio where legends like Diana Ross, Bruce Springsteen, and Suicide have laid tracks—along with a rotating 10-piece ensemble including Laraaji, June McDoom, and Joshua Crumbly. This deep roster allowed producer Dom Monks to explore lushly layered textures, but the arrangements aren't overwrought. As ever, Lenker's bruisingly tender vocals and crushingly vulnerable lyrics take center stage, and they're some of her best yet.

On "Incomprehensible," she reckons with her fear of aging. As silver hair falls on her shoulders, she looks to her maternal ancestors for proof of beauty's enduring nature. Beauty, in Lenker's mind, is impervious to time, and it's the same with love. But the words "beauty" and "love" can't come close to the things themselves. Lenker grapples with this difficulty directly on "Words" ("Words are tired and tense/ Words don't make sense/ Words are feathered and light/ Words won't make it/ Right"). It's also there on "All Night All Day" ("Swallow poison, swallow sugar/ Sometimes they taste the same/ But I know your love is neither/ And love is just a name"). It's at the end of the album's title track, though, that she comes closest to defining the ineffable: "The eye behind the essence/ Still, unmovable, unchanging."

The peak of Double Infinity's emotional arc comes at the start of its final third, in the form of "Grandmother." Here, Lenker addresses her grandmother and lover at once, asking for patience and solace. She's feeling lazy, crazy, and in pain, until suddenly the clouds part and Laraaji's voice—perhaps the purest sonic distillation of love there is—bursts in, giving Lenker her best epiphany yet: "Gonna turn it all into rock and roll."

TRACKLIST

1. Big Thief - Incomprehensible
2. Big Thief - Words
3. Big Thief - Los Angeles
4. Big Thief - All Night All Day
5. Big Thief - Double Infinity
6. Big Thief - No Fear
7. Big Thief;Laraaji - Grandmother
8. Big Thief - Happy with You
9. Big Thief - How Could I Have Known