This Friday, Big Thief release their sixth album, Double Infinity. The band’s first since the departure of bassist Max Oleartchik in June last year, it saw the previously close-knit unit opening up recording sessions to include contributions from 11 other musicians, including vocalist Hannah Cohen and June McDoom, Natural Information Society percussionist Mikel Patrick, and new-age zither player Laraaji.
You can read MOJO’s ★★★★ star review of Double Infinity HERE!
Below, singer Adrianne Lenker, guitarist Buck Meek, and guitarist/producer James Krivchenia discuss the impact of Oleartchik’s departure, reconfiguring as a trio, and inviting other musicians into their creative process. “This record is the most fun I’ve ever had making music,” Lenker tells MOJO’s Victoria Segal. “We decided to blast it right open…”
How do you know when it’s time to regroup as a band?
Adrianne Lenker: “Usually it’s the songs. I get an overflow or build up of songs and I start to get like, Man, if we don’t record soon some of these are going to slip away. It starts from a place of just wanting to get the songs down. And then it turns into a record.”
James Krivchenia: “It’s pretty natural – we don’t have to be like, Guys, we’ve got to get to work. Songs bubble up, things get organised into different piles. We have a big map on Adrianne’s wall at her house that’s been shifting and morphing for a while – sticky notes and half-songs…”
Buck Meek: “Adrianne shows us everything she writes just because we’re all hanging out. There’s often songs where James and I are like, We just really want to play it. We fall in love with it for whatever reason.”
Do many songs slip away? Do you have Springsteen-like volumes shelved?
AL: “I do believe if a song is sturdy, it’ll prove itself over time. But I get worried about not archiving things. Like, what if I just died tomorrow? If you have them down, they’re kind of eternal. We don’t have to carry them all around in our heads anymore.”
JK: “For this album, all the songs were ready, we had a bunch of 20 that we narrowed down as we went. The arrangements themselves, there was no pre-planning – just the people we wanted to play with, who felt really exciting to figure stuff
out with.”
AL: “Sometimes we can sit down and access the energy we want but when you play it to 10 other people you can lose that, so you really have to all hone in on the essence of the song. When that happens it’s incredibly exciting. You can’t always see it coming – that’s why I really feel this record is the most fun I’ve ever had making music. We shared the room with 11 people, the biggest group we ever played with. Those moments when we’d all be jamming and it would all come together – it was such a high.”
Was there anxiety involved in opening out the band?
BM: “We put a lot of intention into choosing the players. Once we were in the room, it was the opposite of anxiety – it felt really free.”
AL: “We were playing together as a trio for a bit, but we didn’t just want to replace Max [Oleartchik, former bassist] because he’s irreplaceable. It was a real loss, a real heartache, really heavy for a bit. When we finally went into this place where we were trying things together, it wasn’t quite right, it wasn’t quite the medicine. So we decided to blast it right open.”
Is “gonna turn it all into rock’n’roll” from Grandmother a Big Thief mission statement?
AL: “That song is the first song the three of us co-wrote. One of the coolest parts is that it raises the question – what is rock’n’roll? When we were originally making this album, the idea was for it to be this heavy rock’n’roll album. That song challenges the idea of what rock’n’roll can be. Laraaji singing on it was so unexpected – that surprised us all. It also reminded us, wait, rock’n’roll’s so far beyond a genre. Like, the earth has mountains and the bedrock and the core and the crust – it’s the rock. Then there’s the roll of the rivers, the ether, the wind, the clouds – these things that flow and blow across the surface of the rock. It reminds us of the idea of two infinities, too, the microcosms and the macro-universe and the dichotomy we live with in every moment, knowing that our bodies will die but we feel this sense of an infinite spirit. That’s rock’n’roll. It’s taking all these things and basically alchemising them into something that can unify us, so we can sing together and metabolise the craziness of life together.”
Double Infinity is out September 5 on 4AD
ORDER: Amazon | Rough Trade | HMV
This interview features in the latest issue of MOJO, staring Robert Plant, Joni Mitchell, Ozzy Osbourne, Willie Nelson, Michael Kiwanuka, Van Morrison and more! More info and to order a copy HERE!
