Big Thief, Double Infinity (digital outlets)

Elsewhere has been quite taken with New York's Grammy-nominated alt.folk band Big Thief and although we were less enamoured with their 2019 UFOF album we enjoyably hung in all the way on their 2022 double Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You and could hear how singer-songwriter Adrianne Lenker was persuasively capable on diverse styles.

Her 2024 Bright Future solo album was among our best of the year selections although we wouldn't recommend anyone dive headlong and unprepared into her Live at Revolution Hall of earlier this year.

Maybe that is why there have been plaintive postings on social media recently along the lines of “I don't get Big Thief”.

For some, are problematic and maybe faltering: there was the loss of founder bassist Max Oleartchik from their commune-like collective; their career blurred by solo albums, notably Lenker's Bright Future, and they are difficult to define.

In the taxonomy of genres, the subspecies “alt.folk” is frayed at the edges by post-folk, alt.country and other spinoff styles.

On this sixth album, Big Thief drift into cosmic folk, Lenker drills down into personal relationships (on Happy With You, “Why do I need to explain myself?”) and at their most approachable there's the straight-ahead folk ballad All Night All Day – admittedly embellished by a whirly-gig of sounds – where Lenker's heartbreaking vocal is central.

Incomprehensible arrives as an autobiographically detailed Beat-folk narrative of road trip (“travelling with some stuff I left when I was a kid . . . the only thing I'll keep are the letters and the photographs”) and thoughts of accepting ageing (“wrinkle like the river, sweeten like the dew”).

Los Angeles (opening with chatter and laughter) is an equally detailed, engrossing song of memory and the healing of a relationship.

The woozy sway and folksy rambunctiousness of Grandmother – with trance musician Laraaji, among others, on zither – talks about “turn it all into rock'n'roll”, although they don't.

Big Thief are still up for challenging their audience: Happy With You finds Lenker repeating the phrase over and over above a surge of folk-rock with prominent bass; the pop-length, psychedelic Words comes with what sounds like disembodied voices looped behind her sweet vocal.

So okay, no, it's not standard alt.folk.

But by the end you'll probably be thinking, “What's not to get?”

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You can hear and buy this album at bandcamp here