Big Thief - Double Infinity Review
On their sixth and most collaborative record Big Thief fails to capture their cosmic chemistry.
Time works differently for Big Thief. A glance at the band’s catalog and their sprawling solo releases will tell you as much. In the decade of their existence, Big Thief has released six albums, two of which (U.F.O.F., Two Hands) were released in the same year, while 2022’s Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You was a bulging double album of some twenty songs. As if writing, recording, releasing and then touring those albums wasn’t enough to keep the group busy, Adrienne Lenker has released five albums of her own during the same period of time. Guitarist Buck Meek has three solo records to his name, and drummer James Krivchenia has four. Big Thief seemed determined to show that they are unfazed by the supposed constructs of the clock.
On ‘Incomprehensible’, Double Infinity’s opener, Lenker confirms such cool commanding of time when she misses a flight. Over a tousled melody full of loose ends, Lenker ceases to worry about departures or delays. Instead she hauls her belongings into a car and documents the passing of the minutes with a contended mumble. It is one of the record’s few highlights, particularly because it boasts one of the Big Thief’s most alluring traits - the way Lenker’s lyrics brush vivid colour into the band’s songs. On ‘Incomprehensible’, pine trees are “a billion broken arrows”, the weather is “cotton candy rain”. Though when she clocks the “soft and lovely silvers” falling on her shoulders and notes that her 33rd birthday means little set against all of eternity, Lenker reveals a preoccupation with time that runs through the record.
Certain moments in life will make you take stock, whether that’s a prominent birthday, an important life event or, in Big Thief's case, the departure of a band mate. In the time that has passed between Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You and Double Infinity, Max Oleartchick, Big Thief’s bassist, left the band. Initially the remaining members huddled together and tried writing an album in isolation. But those “echo-chamber” sessions proved fruitless and the group instead opened their writing process to outside voices for the first time. For three weeks in the middle of a Manhattan winter, a web of musicians contributed their talents and opinions to the recordings that were to become Double Infinity. It is possible that the extra bodies were necessary to help the band move past a creative block, but overall it sounds like a record where Big Thief doubted themselves and overcompensated for Oleartchik’s departure.
The additional percussion, backing vocals and tape loops on ‘Words’ mists the production to the point it sounds messy and busy. ‘No Fear’ is inexplicably seven minutes long with the first of those minutes taken up by a plodding, drifting bassline that sounds like the musical equivalent to an employee on their first day patiently waiting to be given something to do. Laraaji’s backing vocals on “Grandmother” feel equally as aimless, offering little to elevate the song.
Even Lenker’s lyrics, usually so resplendent, sound phoned in when she sings “Gonna turn it all into rock ‘n’ roll” as she does on ‘Grandmother’ or when she chants the lines “Happy with you” and “Poison chain” over and over on ‘Happy With You’ - a particularly deflating moment as the opening rumple of instruments initially suggest a moment close to firm fan favourite ‘Little Things’.
Though Double Infinity is often patchy and frustrating, Big Thief is too good to leave without any moments of concentrated quality. “How Could I Have Known” is crisp in the way that the Plastic Ono Band would sound if they’d spent a summer touring with the Grateful Dead. But it is the title track “Double Infinity” that is the album’s crowning jewel - a moment where everything that makes Big Thief great fuses to create one of their best songs. On a song formed around a simple, marching drum beat and heavy, searching guitar chords, Lenker holds herself firmly in the present while she ruminates on everything that has been and that is to come “Fastening so desperately / to vision and to memory / at the bridge of two infinities / what is forming, what is fading”. The effect is to place a poetic, swaying seriousness at the heart of the record.
For a band that has always spoken of their personal connection as something cosmic, almost telepathic, Double Infinity was always likely to be considered in the context of Oleartchick’s departure. When Lenker sings of “what is lost and what is waiting” on ‘Double Infinity’ it is hard not to think that the connections formed to make this record did not replace the major one Big Thief had lost. Six albums into their career, one small misstep will not be catastrophic for Big Thief and, thankfully, history suggests it won’t take long to hear what comes next.