For their fifth album,
Big Thief
offered up a sprawling double-LP (
Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You
) that spanned styles and moods but, like a playlist, consisted almost entirely of structured, melody-forward songs. The album was a hit, marking their first appearance in the Billboard 200 Top 40. The follow-up finds the group stretching out in a different and more surprising way. Their first album to be recorded without founding bassist
Max Oleartchik
, it finds the remaining trio welcoming in collaborators not only from the Brooklyn indie scene but from the jazz and avant-garde worlds, including the multifaceted
Laraaji
(
Brian Eno
), percussionist
Caleb Michel
Afro-Cuban All Stars
), and, on bass,
Joshua Crumbly
Terrence Blanchard
,
Kasami Washington
). While
are no strangers to sounding loose and live on tape, the resulting
Double Infinity
is easily their most improvisational album yet, even recasting
Adrianne Lenker
's voice as a vamping instrument on occasion. It's also their most meditative and psychedelic record yet -- and that's saying something because
U.F.O.F.
was pretty trippy. This is not to say that it doesn't sound like
, as they've at least ventured into similar territories before, and it was engineered, produced, and mixed by longtime collaborator
Dom Monks
; but there are no counterbalancing indie rock or real folk bops here, and the liner notes credit instruments like tape loop, tablet, drone, and zither in addition to their more standard palette.
starts off with "Incomprehensible," a rock song that's both driving and spacy, and guided by a rambling
Lenker
narrative that's punctuated by echo. That song is followed by another drugged-out psych-rock track, "Words," before "Los Angeles" grounds the set list in less-processed, harmonized folk-rock (singer/songwriters
Hannah Cohen
June McDoom
, and
Alena Spanger
contribute backing vocals to the album). With only nine tracks in all,
nevertheless feels epic in its own right by the time it passes through the somnambulant, seven-minute "No Fear," a song injected with howling feedback and spectral backing vocals; the jammy
feature "Grandmother"; the circular anthem "Happy with You"; and the tambourine-accented singalong "How Could I Have Known," which seems to parade, jongleur-style, around the festival site. While
is an album more likely to wash over listeners than stick, its collaborative, impromptu spirit has infectious qualities of its own, and it's interesting to hear that the band expanded outward instead shrinking with the first departure of a member. ~ Marcy Donelson