Big Thief - Double Infinity Album Review
Originally published in the October 2025 issue of WKCR’s On-Air Guide.
“[Let me be] incomprehensible”—this is the first lyric from Big Thief’s vocalist Adrienne Lenker on their new album, her voice sounding battle-weary but strong amidst brain-tickling synths and pitter-pattering drums. It’s ironic, then, that 2025’s Double Infinity is one of the Brooklyn indie-folk band’s most cohesive and thematically salient albums to date. Their previous record, 2022’s Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You, boasted a tracklist of 20 songs and ran for 80 minutes. In contrast, Double Infinity comes in at 42 minutes with only 9 songs. One can feel a difference sonically as well: Dragon New Warm Mountain felt like Big Thief branching out to touch on the many different genres in their wheelhouse of folk, country, and rock. Double Infinity is far more restrained in its sound, with the band opting for consistently hazy, psychedelic indie folk. A shorter and sweeter tracklist and transcendent sound allow Lenker, guitarist Buck Meek, and drummer James Krivchenia (plus collaborators) to craft brilliant songs about the nature of aging and love.
Part of Adrienne Lenker’s desire to be ‘Incomprehensible” no doubt comes from contemplating her own aging, which she confronts during many key lyrical moments on this record. On the opening track, she sings “The message spirals, ‘Don't get saggy, don't get grey’ / But the soft and lovely silvers are now falling on my shoulder.” Society may try to embed a dread of age, especially in women, but Lenker chooses to find beauty in it. She also remarks on her then-upcoming thirty-third birthday, “That doesn’t really matter next to eternity / But I like a double number, and I like an odd one too.” This symbolism seems to directly relate to the album’s title, with the word “double” extending the meaning of “eternity” or “infinity.” Dissecting the rest of the beautiful wordplay on “Incomprehensible” would take an article unto its own, so I’d like to point out how the song sounds both noisy and whimsical, with Lenker’s reverb-soaked vocals complementing Buck Meek’s warm electric notes.
“Words,” the second track on the album, takes things up a notch with a more lively sound. Krivchenia strikes a busy but steady drumbeat over a far more pop-adjacent guitar riff. Lenker, Meek, and Krivchenia are in top musical form on Double Infinity, but the album would not be what it is without contributions from the other musicians the band invited into the studio, particularly jazz bassist Joshua Crumbly and vocalist Laraaji. Crumbly provides an easygoing sound, replacing the band’s former Max Oleartchik, who left the group last year. Laraaji, an ambient musician known for collaborating with Brian Eno, has haunting vocals in the intro of “Words” (among other tracks) which serve almost as percussion, and he gets a full vocal feature on “Grandmother.”
On “Los Angeles,” Lenker’s lyricism veers toward the topic of love. In an Instagram caption, Lenker and Buck Meek wrote that the song is “a testament to enduring love… which lasts through many forms and boils down till becoming unbreakable.” One might find this reminiscent of Lenker’s incredible 2024 solo album Bright Future, where she examined love in the face of seasons and climates changing. However, she sounds more hopeful here, professing “You call, we come together / Even without speaking.” Gospel-like background vocals lent by Meek, Alena Spanger, Hannah Cohen, and June McDoom support the communal nature of these lyrics, especially on the chorus (“You sang for me.”) The following song, “All Night All Day” is more upbeat and blends romance with sexual innuendo, still keeping the theme of connection between people. The line “Love is just a name / It’s a thing we say / For what pulls through / ‘Til we come together” paints love as such an ethereal concept that even the word ‘love’ itself does not fully describe it. Krivchenia’s drumbeat is also one of the most fun patterns on the album. The more relaxed title track “Double Infinity” arrives halfway through the album and returns to ruminations on aging. Lenker sings “The wildflowers sway with ease / At the bridge of two infinities / What’s been lost and what lies waiting.” Stuck between the future and the past, she finds a soothing natural equilibrium in the present.
A pair of tracks on the back half of Double Infinity are far more repetitive lyrically and come off more like mantras than songs. The first of these is the jazzy “No Fear,” which begins at a creeping tempo with a soul-moving bassline from Crumbly. Lenker makes direct reference to the album cover (a shimmering lime surrounded by rings of lime skin) with the line “There is no time / Round like a lime / Destiny.” The track is overall about shedding emotions in the face of existential dread. On the punchy and even more repetitive “Happy With You,” she sings “Happy with you / Why do I need to explain myself?” Perhaps with her aforementioned fear shed, Lenker feels more secure in expressing her love. “No Fear” and “Happy With You” bookend the song “Grandmother” featuring Laraaji, a six-minute opus that is an instant career highlight for Big Thief and my personal favorite track on the album. It provides an answer to the question of what to do with the time one has left, if the past and future really are infinite voids: “Gonna turn it all into rock-n-roll.” This chorus, sung beautifully by Lenker as Laraaji vocalizes with her, comes like a wave crashing onto a shore of psychedelic folk instrumentation. No electric guitar needed; Big Thief brings you rock ‘n’ roll energy in a folk song.
The band closes out Double Infinity with the love song “How Could I Have Known,” which, like much of the album, places love in the fourth dimension among the past and present. The final lyric is arguably a paradox: “I was alone in that moment / When I first met you.” Lenker describes herself as being alone, but at a time when she was also with her partner, something that the incomprehensibility of time allows. On their wonderfully psychedelic new record, Big Thief wants us to let them be incomprehensible. In acknowledging the dread of time passing, we might find even more joy in the present moment.
