The Magic and Mystery of Big Thief
One of the best bands in indie rock travels wide-open inner spaces on its spellbinding sixth album.
By Jon Dolan
BIG THIEF
Double Infinity
4AD
Early in the sixth album from Big Thief, the band’s singer-songwriter, Adrianne Lenker, misses a flight. For most of us, this wouldn’t be anything but a hassle. She turns it into a dream: “Driving with my lover,” she sings against distant guitar shimmer and agile, circular drumming, “We added up the hours/To see the lupine flowers/Way up past the border/We blew through Thunder Bay.” The song spirals into a beautiful meditation on memory, time, family, aging, and freedom that’s at once casually philosophical, wisely ironic, funny, sad, resilient — and poignantly titled “Incomprehensible,” a phrase she repeats like…
