Review: Big Thief — Double Infinity

Big Thief
Double Infinity
4AD
Street: 09.05.2025
Big Thief = Sharon Van Etten x Joan Baez + Phoebe Bridgers

If you listen closely, you can hear the stillness of silence speaking. In fact many, if not all of us, have experienced moments where more could be said without words, or even movement. But if no one is gesturing or vocalizing, how can communication take place at all?

Double Infinity is a tremendously thought-out concept album that captures the less tangible elements of love and connection. Those that occupy an unspoken space. It’s a far cry from their last full-length release, 2022’s Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You, which has a pared-down approach that leans into Big Thief’s folksy side. On that album cover, a delicate sketch depicts several animals sitting around a campfire, some playing instruments, others seemingly just listening. I like to imagine that, at some point, they all decided to “just listen,” and Double Infinity consists of the myriad realizations they had while draped in that deafening silence.

Big Thief is something of a holdover from the explosion of indie folk in the 2010s, when acts like The Head And The Heart and Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros found unprecedented mainstream success. For better or worse, the “boom-clap-hey” movement has waned. Big Thief was always more akin to something I’ll call — for the sake of coining another new term — emo folk. The songs “Shark Smile” and “Not” are two prominent examples of this. They also have an edge that crops up at times, with distorted, wailing guitar parts courtesy of Buck Meek which shed the band’s soft aesthetic while still communicating a tender and emotional nature.

The band’s new album is more heavily produced than some of these prior offerings. Double Infinity has a psychedelic, indie rock feel to it, featuring heavily strummed acoustic chords paired alongside captivating melodies, as on “Los Angeles.” From start to finish, the lyrics of vocalist and principal songwriter Adrianne Lenker provoke an introspective examination of the metaphysical aspects of existence, and I see these nine songs as simply a means to an end in reaching some crucial, thematic truths.

The first track, “Incomprehensible,” is a song that challenges the preconceptions that society puts forth about a woman as she ages. While the band has definitely matured, Lenker sounds happier and more at peace than she’s ever been. She sings, “In two days it’s my birthday and I’ll be thirty-three / That doesn’t really matter next to eternity.” And, later, “‘I’m afraid of getting older, that’s what I’ve learned to say / Society has given me the words to think that way.”

Words can be fickle things. They don’t always describe what’s going on under the surface. On the second song, fittingly titled “Words,” Lenker sings about the oft-hidden, dynamic nature of being alive. “Only ever half home, I’m / Only ever half alone,” she sings, “With my subconscious mind.” A fast but relaxing ditty and pre-chorus fade-out builds suspense that culminates in a scrambled and distorted guitar solo about halfway through the track, like some sort of sonic revelation of the subconscious. Meanwhile, the controlled chaos engendered by gleeful background mutterings, noodling electric guitar and insistent drums denotes that there’s always a lot going on under the surface.

“Los Angeles” is the catchiest tune on the album, a rhythmically strummed anthem of how it feels to share intimate memories, present and past, with someone. Lenker’s vocals are appealing on this song because they sync well with the ups and downs of the acoustic chord progression. Meanwhile, she lyrically explores the impact of silence on relationships. From going on a road trip with a lover in a car that has “nothing on the stereo,” Lenker finds that neither she, nor her muse, need to utter a syllable in order to be understood: “Even without speaking / I can tell what you are thinking / Even without saying / We dream our dreams together.”

There’s a lot of love on this album, and I assume that’s because love transcends the boundaries that have been instituted by forces like time or common sense. But it’s the feeling that transcends. Lenker pines on “All Night All Day,” almost whisper-singing, “Love is just a name / It’s a thing we say / For what pulls through / ‘Til we come together.” There are moveable notions, like words and social constructs, and then there’s the conceptual clusterfuck of linear time, described on the title track “Double Infinity” as being, “The eye behind the essence / Still unmovable, unchanging.”

Time evidently girdles all existence. The physical world is supposedly governed by it. Interesting, then, to note that on the next track, “No Fear,” Lenker describes the self as ungovernable.

“No Fear” is the most meditative song on the album, led by an entrancing hand-drum beat. Confidently assuaged of any doubt, Lenker sings, “There is no fear, mind so clear, mind so free / There is no time, round like a lime, destiny.” Indeed, the cover art represents the natural world with a lime that’s surrounded by an endless loop. Big Thief may not be this heady, but I am, so here goes: By breaking free from the rigid constructs of the perceptible, whether it be one’s notions of self or time itself, we all realize we’re both more and less than what we think. We’re a part of the celestial infinity, sure, but we’re still not greater than nature… and that’s natural, like a lime. So get out there and love somebody, already!

Lenker says it best on “Grandmother,” another standout, late-album ode, which features American multi-instrumentalist Laraaji vocalizing in the background. Leading into the chorus, Lenker sings: “It’s alright, everything that happened, happened / So what’s the use of holding? / It’s unfolding, we’re all insane / We are made of love / We are also made of pain.” Big Thief’s intention with all of this heady nonsense? They’re “gonna turn it all into rock and roll.”

When you’re a musician and, more importantly, a feeling human in the cosmic fabric, what more is there to say or do? —Kyle Forbush

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