Big Thief have done it again. Despite the 2024 departure of their bassist of nine years, Max Oleartchik, the Brooklyn-built indie band’s sixth album sounds like another instant classic. The combination of solidly crafted, intelligently soul-searching songs with the group’s audible, alchemical joy in jamming together makes Double Infinity a record you immediately know you can trust to take the full weight of your day.
The title, Double Infinity, is a reference to a line in opener “Incomprehensible”. Opening with a sprinkle-jingle of bells before launching into one of the record’s many addictive grooves, this is a song that finds band leader Adrianne Lenker setting the milestone of her 33rd birthday in the context of “eternity” and the ageing skins of her mother and grandmother. In her sweet, smart voice she confides that “I like a double number and I like an odd one too”.
She’s a questing, conversational artist, working in the companionable tradition of Paul Simon. Like him, Lenker is a singer who sits beside you on the bus, speculating on the quirks of your fellow passengers and linking our view from the window – in this case, lupins, pine trees, ravens and sparrows – with the stirrings of memories and hopes for the future.
Perhaps it was her upbringing in various Christian cults that led Lenker to write songs with the shape of secular prayers. “Incomprehensible” takes listeners from missed flights to her plea to “let gravity be my sculptor, let the wind do my hair/ Let me dance in front of people without a care.”
The influence of Simon also seeps into the sound, which often draws on rhythms and instruments from around the world. “Words” bounces beautifully along its Malian blues influences as Lenker muses: “I’m only ever half alone with my subconscious.” Zither and tablet breathe a subtly tropical texture into “Los Angeles”, on which the small intensity of a relationship is contextualised by vastness (in this case, that of the Grand Canyon and the ocean that “took you in when I pushed you away”).
Elsewhere, the gorgeous “All Night All Day” swings along – hands in the deep pockets of James Krivchenia’s baggy beat – to deliver the album’s most singalong chorus: “Swallow poison, swallow sugar/ Sometimes they taste the same/ But I know your love is neither/ And love is just a name/ It’s a thing we say for what pulls through.” Buck Meeks’s guitar twangs with an easy-going yearning through the Americana of the title track. “No Fear” is a meditative dirge, muzzy with feedback and sloshy guitar loops, over which Lenker boils existence down to time being “round like a lime” (hence the cover art).
In a time where we’re constantly told that intelligence, or being “in your head”, often leads to misery, Lenker is proof that you can ponder the big personal or existential questions and still land in a positive place. See also: the merry defiance of “Happy with You”, which repeats its title mantra over a jaunty pulse, asking “Why do I need to explain myself?” It’s a cheerfully throwaway moment. “Grandmother” – the first song the band wrote together – is a dreamy trip of a tune where Lenker’s voice joins warmly with the soulful ululations of American multi-instrumentalist and “laughter meditation” practitioner Laraaji. Double Infinity wraps itself up with the campfire strummer of “How Could I Have Known”, on which the band’s voices unite over a love that will “live forever”. Heartwarming and mindwarming, this album is a pure pick-me-up.
