Album Review: Big Thief, Double Infinity

Big Thief’s sixth long-player was recorded last winter in New York’s Power Station studio, when Adrianne Lenker, Buck Meek and James Krivchenia cycled through frozen streets between Brooklyn and Manhattan, before playing for nine hours a day over an intense three-week period, improvising and writing as they went.

The result sounds anything but chaotic, and anything but wintry. Double Infinity is as warm, welcoming and comfortably familiar as a night spent reconnecting with old friends after months apart.

Nothing is rushed; everything is laid-back. Like album centre-piece ‘No Fear’, just shy of seven minutes that take their own sweet time, with almost two minutes of gentle bass-led sway before Lenker’s low-key and lo-fi vocal enters proceedings.

On the gentle but insistent ‘Incomprehensible’, Lenker’s voice takes centre stage, as she proves herself one of the finest songwriters at work in the USA today. Like all the best songwriters, she manages to make the personal seem universal, turning the confessional into the familiar.

The country twang of ‘Los Angeles’ is the loveliest of love songs (“We dream our dreams together / Even without laying in the same bed”), the ragged beauty of the title track is absolutely gorgeous, while the gorgeously yearning ‘All Night All Day’ is one of the most intimate sex songs you’ll ever set ears on. ‘Words’ is a heady fugue of bass, drums and swirling melody, Lenker’s sweet vocal contrasting with the song’s unusual time signature.

An album to immerse yourself in, Double Infinity is a balm for the soul, an antidote to the bleak newsreel of these troubled times.

9/10