Big Thief’s Double Infinity Album Review

Big Thief’s last album release was in 2022. The massive, 20-song, Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You, a follow-up to the rare feat of putting out two albums in 2019 (Two Hands and U.F.O.F). After years of prolific output, fans found themselves waiting, only to be shocked in July 2024 when the band announced that founding bassist Max Oleartchik was leaving. For a group that had already weathered frontwoman Adrianne Lenker and guitarist Buck Meek’s divorce in 2018, Oleartchik’s departure carried a heavy weight. The band promised a “new chapter,” and by June 2025, when they unveiled Double Infinity for release in September, fans were left with a big question: just how new would this chapter be?

On September 5th, over a year after Oleartchik’s exit, Double Infinity arrived as a dramatically lighter, nine-song album, showcasing just how far the trio was willing to push their sound. Recorded at The Power Station in New York City in January 2025, the album departs from the intimate setups of previous records, where the band’s four core members would huddle to work out harmonies, licks, and arrangements. Instead, the trio opened the studio doors to a trusted cohort of musicians, inviting their input and perspectives into the process.

The album became an exploration of what the band is without their bassist. For now, the answer seems to be that it’s too soon to define who Big Thief is as a trio. The result is a more experimental record, one that broadens the band’s creative surface area, expands their influences, and incorporates new collaborators to produce something sonically distinct.

Lenker’s lead vocal, once the clear center of Big Thief’s songs, now shares the spotlight with added layers of percussion, echo, sound effects, and background vocals that weave shoegaze and ambient influences into the band’s folk, indie, and rock roots. The seven-minute track “No Fear,” exemplifies this perfectly, opening up with consistent percussion and a bass riff that eventually gives way to echoey vocals and sound effects that float in a vacuum. 

“Grandmother,” a track that features Laraaji, is also a great example of this experimentation. The song is propelled by Krivchenia’s reliable drums, which help the listener move through the dense verses before opening up into a bright and more traditional ‘Big Thief’ chorus that strips the song of its interesting sound effects and focuses on the band’s core instruments. Amidst all this though, Laraaji provides atmospheric, textured background vocals that are completely foreign to Big Thief's soundscape, creating an interesting juxtaposition between playing it safe and experimenting. 

“We are made of love
We are also made of pain
Gonna turn it all into rock and roll
Gonna turn it all into rock and roll
Gonna turn it all into rock and roll
Gonna turn it all into rock and roll"

Amidst the change in sound the lyrics remain - as is usual with Big Thief - descriptive, complex and gripping. Unfortunately in many songs they take the backseat, especially in the first couple of listens, as they try to share the stage with the increased layers. Interestingly, most of the lyrics exude joy, happiness, and positivity, which although not alien to the band, is not the norm either, with Lenker stating that she “doesn't shy away from sadness.” 

The album’s opening track, “Incomprehensible,” comes as Lenker’s response to society's expectations of women, juxtaposing the mainstream message of the “ugliness” of aging with her own insistence on the beauty that comes with it.

“The message spirals, "Don't get saggy, don't get grey"
But the soft and lovely silvers are now falling on my shoulder”

When Lenker sings “let me be incomprehensible,” she shrugs off the demand to be legible, insisting on the freedom to exist without explanation. It’s a line that doubles as a manifesto for the band itself: after surviving a divorce and the loss of their bassist, Big Thief doesn’t need to justify their continued existence. “You don’t have to understand it,” Lenker seems to say, “it just is.”

That tension between reinvention and continuity runs through the record. In “Los Angeles,” the third track, the band slips back into its signature intimacy as Lenker sings of a love that “boils down till becoming unbreakable.” The title track, meanwhile, shows her songwriting at its finest, wrestling with unease in the present while idealizing both past and future. Here Lenker casts this moment, both personal and collective, as pivotal: the “bridge between two infinities.”

“Longing to go back again
To be someone I've never been

I echo and I seek to win
Mourning and celebrating
‍
Fastening so desperately
To vision and to memory
At the bridge of two infinities
What is forming, what is fading.”

Closer “How Could I Have Known” circles back to the album’s recurring motif of time and its passing, reflecting on how we often only grasp the weight of a moment long after it’s gone. It’s unlikely the song was written for him, but in light of Oleartchik’s exit, it’s almost impossible not to hear it as a message; a quiet acknowledgment of where the four of them once stood, the strength of their friendship, and the artistry they built together. In that sense, the track feels like a deliberate farewell to Big Thief as a four-piece, a way of closing one chapter before stepping into the next.

“And they say time's the fourth dimension
They say everything lives and dies
But our love will live forever
Though, today, we said goodbye
How could I have known?

How could I have known in that moment
What we'd turn into?
I was alone in that moment
When I first met you”

Ultimately, Double Infinity is not what fans expected, and for some, that unpredictability might make it a harder listen. It’s lighter, stranger, and more spacious than anything Big Thief has done before. But beneath the experimentation, and maybe after a few re-listens, the core remains: Lenker’s voice, the band’s lyricism, and a willingness to embrace change. In opening themselves up to new textures, collaborators, and sounds, the trio has created an album that is less a cry for what was lost and more a celebration of what’s possible, an album that leaves us wondering where the trio will take the band next. 

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