Big Thief - Double Infinity

Indie Rock – Released September 5, 2025 – 9 songs, 42 mins

ROZ

This week at Too Sweet Reviews we shift our eyes and our ears to another TSR favourite, talented singer/songwriter Adrianne Lenker and her band Big Thief. The band graced our blog back in 2022 with their fifth studio outing Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You, an album that kissed the top of Reid’s end of year lists and had a ripple effect throughout all three members, for better or for worse. With acclaim and accolades spanning back to their formation as an official band back in 2015 and with the news of bassist and founding member Max Oleartchik’s departure from the group, it would be a crime to skip over this album from the Thief. This week’s album is Double Infinity.

Back when I wrote my review for Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You, I tried my very best to paint the image stuck inside my mind that perfectly embodied my issues with the album. My ‘have you ever gone on a really long car ride’ story is to this day my favourite rant I’ve had the pleasure of going on since starting this music review blog with Lundi and Reid years ago. The major qualm I had was in the sheer size of their effort; 5 months of recording and 45 finished songs that ultimately was chiseled down to 20 final songs for the album – still 10 too long if you ask me. I’m all for the creative process but there are still invariably limits in the modern age for producing a record. This was heavily approved upon with Double Infinity, as we see 50 to 60 songs recorded (alleged number given from the band) whittled down to 9 polished and finished tracks. For the loss of their co-collaborator and bassist Oleartchik, the band refills their cup by assembling a crew of ten different session musicians to add a new twist to the now-trio.

The result is a positive one, and from the opening bell I’m filled with hope and promise of a fantastic record. Incomprehensible, Words, All Night All Day and Double Infinity fill my ears and my soul with beautiful compositions as they simultaneously weave together stories of love, lust and loss. Lenker feels almost emotionally distraught as she pours her heart out across the record, and it’s not a stretch to imagine that Oleartchik’s exit was a huge factor in that. Just as we hit the halfway mark however, a chill hits the air and my love for the album slowly cools. Tracks such as No Fear and Happy with You are particularly gloomy (and not in a good way), as Lenker opts out of her usual wordsmithing and instead leans on repetition and reiteration. As a lover of electronic music, my love for repetition is baked into my psyche. However, for such repetition to be pushed to the forefront in a band with such a songwriter focus, it leaves much to be desired.

Big Thief is a bittersweet band for this reviewer. On one hand, Leading frontwoman Adrianne Lenker stays within my high praises, with her 2024 effort Bright Future being a top 15 album of the year of me and her 2024 song No Machine coming in as my #2 song of the year (it brought me to literal tears at one point – hungover tears but tears nonetheless). The phrase ‘Poetry in motion; with a sound and substance that is sure to resonate with you long after the music is turned off’, is how I concluded my thoughts. So where is the disconnect here for me? At the end of the day, I simply feel as though Lenker thrives on her own, whether it’s due to the fact that she can be unequivocally herself and nothing else, or if it’s perhaps some other factor that escapes me. On Double Infinity, Big Thief soldiers on without founding member Max Oleartchik after his 2024 departure from the band. While the album starts strong and has a handful of standout moments, it unfortunately fatigues and stumbles the longer it marches on.

Overall Rating: 7.0/10

Favourite Song: Incomprehensible

LUNDI

Heading into this week’s review, curiosity on how easily these words would come ran rampant. See, Adrianne Lenker and her band Big Thief were on the docket, and while she isn’t praised quite as much as Thom Yorke on the TSR blog, I’d wager she’s an easy number two. Sometimes you honestly just get tired of praising those you absolutely love and admire and if that sort of artist hasn’t clicked for the listener yet, it likely never will. Well, in the end the words came easy my friends, because for the first time in their discography Big Thief have delivered an album comprised of a surprising amount of low quality songs. Double Infinity, such a grandiose thought, fails to deliver any music worth its title. 

Double Infinity opens with the sparkling Incomprehensible, a beautiful storytelling of a Lenker travel detour through Ontario. It oozes of character and imagery only few songwriters can accomplish. Followed up with Words and Los Angeles, the album’s two standout tracks, Double Infinity seemed primed to be another instant indie folk classic. But for the remaining six songs, the well had seemingly run dry, as if the bands skillset for profound eclectic songwriting had suddenly all but disappeared. It’s not just a poor effort for the Big Thief standard, it becomes harder and harder to defend Double Infinity in any capacity with each spin. 

Normal deep dives for Big Thief find you admiring intricate details and mesmerizing tales. Double Infinity finds you falling through the cracks. To hear Lenker even write one repetitive line chorus is noteworthy, to do it multiple times is astounding and completely unexpected. Not even the newest artists cutting their teeth in the industry get away with that. The musicianship behind the album is also very uninspiring. It’s breezy but lacklustre, a fairly unmemorable 42 minute runtime. I would have thought losing their bassist would have minimal impact but BT’s first crack at a trio record is dull and dare I say it lazy. I know 90% of bands would give a limb to be able to write this sort of album, but the lasting impression is this is by far Big Thief’s least interesting record. 

At this point there’s no choice to wonder where the mind of Adrianne Lenker stands. While Dragon and Bright Future personally underwhelmed they both still had pristine song writing. Even though neither grabbed me to the extent of Big Thief’s earlier works you could still see the beautiful artistic expressions behind them. With Double Infinity there is nothing. Hallow and repetitive. Passes by in an instant for all the wrong reasons. After seven albums in six years, has the great Adrianne Lenker run out of stories and ideas? Has Big Thief become complacent amongst its massive success? Or are the band on a self indulgent crusade? Unanswerable questions  surely but one of those is seemingly the case. No matter which way you shake it Double Infinity is a complete musical dud. 

In a relatively short career Big Thief have solidified themselves are one of the greatest  and most vital indie rock bands to ever grace the stage, but even the best are prone to stumble. Their sixth studio album, Double Infinity, is an unfortunate musical misstep. 

Overall Rating: 6.9/10

Favourite Song: Words 

REID

If you had read me the full list of artists releasing music in advance of 2025, my excitement would’ve been through the roof. Well it’s mid-September, the majority of those albums have fallen short of expectations and time is running out! That’s not to say they’ve all been failures, by no means. But very few took the bull by the horns and eclipsed their lofty outlook. Enter Big Thief. No way they’ll miss the mark, right?

Unfortunately yes. Yes, they did.

Double Infinity is the sixth studio release from the group since first appearing on the scene in 2016. The nine song, forty-three-minute runtime is an indie folk jam session with psychedelic effects sprinkled throughout. It’s difficult to put your finger on exactly what the issue is but something just isn’t right. The music doesn’t serve the vocal as effectively as it has in the past and while there are moments of writing brilliance from Lenker, it’s overshadowed by face palm moments.

Perhaps the most alarming trait of this album is its low ceiling. Despite Dragon’s (2022) murky TSR reception, we all agreed the magic was still there. I had Change as my song of the year and frankly, a couple others may have hit my top-10 if it wasn’t for our ‘single song per artist’ rule. Simulation Swarm also landed atop Lundi’s list despite the low album rating. This extended to Lenker’s solo album last year, Bright Future (2024). No Machine came in at number two and three for Roz and I respectively on 2024 lists. Free Treasure may have also made my list without the stipulation. These songs gave me goosebumps as Lenker’s songwriting and generational vocal immersed me deep in her universe. While there are a few nice songs on Double Infinity; Words, Los Angeles, All Night All Day and How Could I Have Known stand out - they pale in comparison to the past work.

You know what may be worse than a low ceiling? A low floor! I’m confident I haven’t used this word before while describing music but here goes – the lyrical efforts of Happy With You and No Fear are insulting. The former just repeats the titular words over THIRTY times in four and half minutes. The latter repeats the same verse EIGHT times over seven minutes. Just last year I wrote out the entire verse of Free Treasure in my review because of how damn beautiful it was. We know what you can do, Lenker. This is insulting to our intelligence. I am NOT happy with you. To make matters worse, the music on both tracks has so much promise.

So what went wrong? Did the loss of bassist and founding member, Max Oleartchik, leave a glaring creative hole? Is the shear volume of output catching up to Adrianne? Has she used up all her love songs? Does she need some good old-fashioned heartbreak to reinvigorate the depths of her artistry? Whatever it is, let’s hope they get back on track in the short term.

Big Thief have differentiated themselves from the pack and established an expectation of greatness. Sadly, Double Infinity falls short of that benchmark, as they struggle to match their creative peak amid questionable songwriting decisions.

Overall Rating: 6.7/10

Favourite Song: Words