I’m not the world's biggest folk music fan. While I have always had my favorites, it's a genre I’ve only begun to explore in depth in the last year. That being said, I do believe, much like the palate, that music taste is a muscle that can be worked to gain an appreciation for any genre. And so, as my year of folk has taken me from Baez to Tanega to Mipso, I have found myself enjoying the soft rhythms of folk more and more. Now, as my year of folk draws ever closer to a close, I have finally found a fondness for the one band that, up until their latest release, had eluded me: Big Thief.
I’ve followed Big Thief from the sidelines throughout their entire career. My lovely wife is a huge fan, and so whenever we’re in their car, I’m exposed to all the band's extended works and offshoots. I’ve heard the early stuff off A-sides and B-sides, I’ve tried the solo works of both frontwoman Adrianne Lenker and guitarist Buck Meek, and I’ve heard every album from Masterpiece through Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You. Frankly, I haven’t cared for most of it. Many try to call Big Thief alternative or indie-folk, but let's be honest, this is a clear-cut folk band we're talking about. Their songs usually have a formula: mellow guitars, complex vocals, and the tiniest spatter of drums you ever did hear. Pure folk. Occasionally adding an electric guitar here or a few bleeps of a synth there does not an alt band make. As someone who has heard a healthy chunk of the band’s discography, the one thing I am certain of is that Big Thief is a vocal act. The instrumentals just aren’t impressive; you come for the lyrics. Lenker’s way with words is nearly unmatched in modern songwriting, and if her incredible command of the pen wasn’t enough, she’s also an insanely talented vocalist. The instruments are a backtrack to her gut-wrenchingly powerful singing that hits you like a lead pipe hits a windshield, and though that may not be my thing, I can absolutely understand why it has drawn such a large following.
When I heard Double Infinity for the first time, I was positively blown away by it. They have had their forays outside their usual formula in the past, but an entire album that doesn’t need to be twisted or cherry-picked to be called alternative was not what I was expecting. This is what alt-folk sounds like. Lenker’s brutal vocals paired with music that you can boogie to make a potent combination that I can’t help but praise. The album places a much heavier emphasis on percussion. In the past, you had to listen closely to hear the beats, which in my opinion could have passed for the work of a drum machine, but on Double Infinity, the drums finally get a chance to be something other than a whisper in the back. The switch to heavily synth-based music also came as a shock. A good synth hook is the fastest way into my heart, and this album delivers time and time again. Not to mention that Double Infinity has given us the first Big Thief guitar solo that has ever motivated me to back up the song and play it again so that I could better masticate what had been laid down for me. You would think that this investment in the instrumentals would come at the cost of Lenker’s vocals, but you would be wrong. Lenker delivers that same hard-hitting style many have come to love.
Suffice to say, I was impressed by this album, so it came as a shock to me when I discovered that many fans were disappointed by it. I’ve heard it called overpowering, meandering, and a departure from what made Big Thief great. Now pardon my French, but I think that’s dumb as hell. Every complaint I have heard so far boils down to one issue: it’s not Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You 2. Double Infinity had a lot to live up to following this album, and I think it may have been set up for failure. Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You was an eighty-minute, twenty-track album. This was a quarantine project, meaning the band had a lot of time to focus purely on the record, considering they wouldn’t be doing anything else for about a year. The result is a folk masterpiece; what else would you expect? With that much time to pour into a single work, it’s bound to come out excellent. Sadly, when you do a record like this, its follow-up will never get the praise it deserves; take Goats Head Soup, for example. This fantastic album has been relegated to the realm of deep cuts, and why? Because it followed Exile on Main Street, the classic double LP that to this day is hailed by some as one of the best albums of all time. How are you supposed to follow that?
It’s also hard to ignore the parallel between Big Thief going totally alt and Dylan going electric. If you didn’t see the biopic earlier this year, the story goes that in 1965, legendary folk musician Bob Dylan began playing electric-centered rock music. This culminated in a huge scene at the Newport Folk Festival, where a crowd previously ecstatic to see Dylan play ended up lambasting him when he played electric guitar on stage. They may seem anything but; however, folk fans are vicious. If you dare step outside your established niche, they will be waiting with frothy mouths to ceremonially disembowel you. If you ask me, that’s a big part of what is going on with Double Infinity; Big Thief “went electric,” and now the fans want blood. If you are one who has found this album off-putting, I beg you to step back and seriously consider if you think it’s of poor quality or if you would have been in the crowd hurling rocks and cans at Dylan.
So, the album was set up to fail by its predecessor and spurned for stepping away from the band's status quo. What does that mean for Double Infinity? Unfortunately, I think we may be witnessing the creation of a deep cut in real time. While plenty of fans have expressed adoration for the record, those who don’t like it are screaming louder, and in the end, those negative opinions are usually what’s remembered. I think that in twenty years, when this record can be removed from the context of its release, it will be looked back on fondly. It will be hailed as a triumph of experimentation and called a forgotten gem. Before all that, those who will sing its praises in a few decades will have to drag it through the mud because it’s not what they wanted. But that’s their problem; in the meantime, I’ll be waiting for my local record store to get vinyl copies in stock. You better believe I’m going to be first in line to pick one up.
