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All bands endure some kind of loss. Sometimes it’s personal, like the dissolution of a marriage; sometimes it’s structural, like the departure of a member. Big Thief has endured both, and for years, their very survival seemed to suggest that no rupture was insurmountable.
From the outset, the cosmic-folk group resembled not only a band but an ongoing emotional experiment. Much of their mythos was bound up in the marriage—and eventual divorce—of Adrianne Lenker and Buck Meek, who continued to tour, record, and work in close quarters while speaking a private language known only to themselves. They became an emblem of the band’s unusual capacity for conflict resolution and emotional maturity, a quality that has inspired not only fans but even unlikely corners of the corporate world, with Forbes and LinkedIn posters citing the band as a model for management practices.
In 2022, their fault lines were exposed. Their decision to perform in Tel Aviv invited swift backlash and marked the first time the outside world intruded on their carefully guarded ecosystem. The controversy forced the band to speak a new language not entirely their own. Their attempts at political discourse often veered toward the group speaking in vague, naïve universalisms. Before calling off their two dates in Israel, they said they had hoped to “love beyond disagreement.” Soon after, the band announced that Max Oleartchik, their bassist who was born and raised in Tel Aviv, had left due to “interpersonal reasons.” Many wondered whether the events were connected. In our conversation, Lenker insists they were not.
Big Thief’s new album, Double Infinity, is their sixth album and first without Oleartchik. Instead of closing ranks, the remaining trio loosened their grip, decamped to New York’s Power Station studio with producer Dom Monks, and invited a constellation of musicians they admired—including the new age experimental composer Laraaji—to improvise live in the room. They tracked together, self-arranging around the demos Lenker brought to the studio: “The rocks we’d form a river around,” as she put it. For a group long defined by its closeness, it was a way of testing whether the band’s covenant could hold even as its structure shifted. Song forms were pried open by free improvisation: tensions dissolved, sounds glimmered, and turned extraterrestrial. The music became loose, billowy, almost eerily calming.
In conversation, little of the coiled power that animates Big Thief’s music is present. They are simply three mildly eccentric people. Lenker, in plaid, rubs her eyes; James Krivchenia leans forward, sparky and alert; Meek, outdoors in the Topanga sunshine, wears cycling glasses and a frowzy hat. They struggle to find the words for their loss. But they are willing to try.
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity
Lenker: I like to think that there’s growth happening inside myself and inside all of us as a band. When I think about Masterpiece, in the song “Real Love,” I was singing, “Real love makes your lungs black, real love is a heart attack.” I wasn’t subscribing to that ideal entirely, but more so expressing that sometimes, my impression of what love was, that deepest intimacy, equaled deepest hurt. I think that as I’ve grown, as I’ve had these restorative relationships that have helped me heal, and as I’ve been repairing my own way of thinking, my perspectives on love and letting go have grown more tolerant.
My ability to be here in this body, in this world, in this life, and in relation to everything has increased, and there’s more allowance for those shadowy worlds. Because I recognize something far greater than that, which is what real love actually is. It’s way beyond our understanding; it’s incomprehensible. Even these guys alone, James and Buck, they’ve helped repair my ability to trust in goodness.
Lenker: Yeah, all these objects were living in my dad’s basement. We had plans to fly from Minnesota to New York, but we missed our flight. Since we just had this rental car, I grabbed all the stuff that was gathering dust in the basement. They were the only objects from my childhood that existed, and I thought, “What do I do with them?” There were many of these wooden boxes filled with all these little trinkets that seemed so irrelevant, but I kept all the letters and photographs because there’s something useful in them. They’re like living messages from the past.
It’s interesting, though; I started calling my dog Mr. Bear because his name is Oso, which means ‘bear’ in Spanish. And I was like, “Whoa, my little child self named this bear Mr. Bear, and now, in the future, I have a real Mr. Bear.’ I remember talking to Mr. Bear as a child; he was so alive to me. I blow-dried his hair and burned his head with the blow dryer, and I was so mortified. Now I’m giving my dog baths and talking to him, and I think, ‘Whoa, you came to life, Mr. Bear.’ Sorry, I don’t know why I was going on about that.
Lenker: There was a paper I ran as a kid called It’s A Story Right Now. I was probably 7 years old. There’s something so magical about putting something down, not from the past or from the future, but right now. I’d interview my parents. Like, “Right now, I’m in the kitchen. My mom is making fried green tomatoes. Betsy, the dog, is jumping over something. My sister is doing a cartwheel at the same time.” I had the feeling of not only being in the moment, but reporting the moment. It’s an interesting extra-dimension. I think that really was an early form of songwriting. Both witnessing and being a part of something is a huge part of songwriting, and also of Eastern philosophy. I had a really early cognizance of both being in the place and of watching it happen at the same time.
Krivchenia: I’ve always admired artists who, as they get older, go through these weird changes where their music becomes less relevant and they’re going in all these different directions. You can tell the ones who are following their actual inner voice versus the ones who just want to be young forever.
Meek: The concept of youth is so often misused or misinterpreted. I think we all grew up playing music with much older musicians. At least I did as a teenager, playing guitar with musicians who were much later in life. Even at 9, I played with these 90-year-old musicians in Texas. To this day, they are some of the most playful, curious, open-minded, and truly youthful people I’ve ever interacted with. I think there’s something about music that makes a lot of space for what I consider to be ageless.
Lenker: Man, scheduling is hard. But I also think there was the feeling of burrowing into this warm little place in the city. It was our first time making an album in New York City, let alone deciding to bike all the way to and from the studio. The cold gave us the sense of being a tiny little speck in this big city, and then of going through a door into a warm space with twelve other musicians. It was like a refuge from the bustle, rather than being in an idyllic, quiet country setting where you’re in the studio and you want to go outside to get away. It was kind of like going inside the getaway. It was the feeling of hibernation. And I’m a Minnesota girl, so I was in some deeply cold winters in my childhood, and I’ve always felt really creative during that time.
Meek: I think there is a kinetic alignment to moving together as a pack. We often changed our route depending on the wind. We’d play beautiful, ambient Irish music on a Bluetooth speaker, which kind of turned the city into a poetic landscape. We’d ride our bikes through Times Square blasting Enya. It was a way to have a playful, physical relationship with the city space before going into the studio and getting really heady.
Krivchenia: After Max left, we were working on stuff as a trio and even did a little recording. The three of us have been playing together so long, and I think the energy paths were just stuck. You know, you’re so used to the way people play. Everyone has so many preconceptions and we all have our quirks, and we’re all basically able to mindread one another at this point, and detect everyone’s moods. But being in a big group shakes you out of that, because all of a sudden you’re not just performing with your super close friends. With those close friends, you can be super intimate and open, but you can also be more of an asshole, because they get you, you know what I mean? In a big group, you’re totally aware of the different ecosystem. You need to step back and see how you fit into it, and find your way through it in a way that’s new and not the same path.
Meek: Yeah. Connecting back to your previous question, I think playing music is very physical as well as mental, and sometimes those two things are at odds. Both are very valuable, but my mind often overrides intuition or the nature of what my body knows, its somatic intelligence. I think playing with a group of people in a big room like that forces you to listen outside of yourself and your own thought processes and to tap into a more responsive, intuitive relationship with what’s happening around you. I see Laraaji as a master of that. He maintained a really open, almost neutral presence throughout the whole session, where he was just listening to everything and responding with incredible openness. It was a big lesson for me.
Krivchenia: When we were first planning this album, we were a four-piece with Max. We went through so many changes: a lot of pain, grief, growth, decisions, and puzzles. We had to figure things out to get to the point where everyone we called to play on the sessions said yes, and we booked a space, and Dom Monks flew from overseas. We whittled these songs down from 50, and we didn’t even know if this was going to work. You don’t know if all these people will get along, but the laughter that welled up from those moments of sitting together came from the feeling that this was all coming to life right before our ears.
Krivchenia: If you’re open to it, being in a band is such a beautiful space to be a teacher for relationships. Like, Buck and Adrianne were married and divorced, and it so easily could have been just like, fuck it, let’s break up. We always could have gone down the easier path, but I want the complicated, messy, beautiful, twisted thing. I don’t want to just be alone, even though it’d be easier, because it’s not gonna fulfil this deeper gut urge. I feel like it’s taught me about being open to change, being open to other people asking you to change in order to make the relationship work.
Lenker: It’s a similar question you might ask yourself in a romantic partnership: Is this helping me become my highest self? Is this relationship helping me grow, or is it dragging me down? There have been so many moments that could have been a breaking point, but we pushed through into a new space and it was because each of us were willing to be like, “This music, this band, being here with you guys, it’s important enough for me to take a real long, hard look at myself and change the things that are causing me and my friends pain.”
Meek: In a band, there’s a really powerful rewards system for that work. We’re at our strongest whenever we’re in unanimous agreement, but there is so much compromise required in the process to arrive there.
Lenker: We had to part ways with our bass player of 10 years who we love so much, like family. We don’t have to have that story of the band who hate each other and couldn’t stand to be in the same room as each other. We didn’t break up because we were avoidant or couldn’t face our shit. There’s not that many bands that seem successful to me. I’m not talking about money and fame, I’m talking about loving each other still, and still really enjoying playing music together. I guess the answer to your question, like, what a band can’t survive is, like, an individual refusing to look at something in themselves that the rest of the group sees.
Lenker: I think it gives a story that satisfies people to not continue to assume all these other things. It’s tricky because if you were in a deep romantic relationship and you decided to part ways because of a number of complex things, how much of that is really yours to broadcast to the world? How is there any way of doing it without hurting the other? It’s almost worth taking the blow, with everyone assuming what they will and saying the hurtful things. The shit is something we’re willing to take in order to protect Max.
We have reasons that are personal and deep. We had a loving 10-year working relationship. We went through so much together, and there’s no way to cheapen it. Sometimes you don’t want to be vulnerable about certain things with the public, because I don’t trust them enough. There’s things between us as individuals that meant we were no longer growing as a unit. We had to part ways and those reasons are far too complex to just sum up in any paragraph, and even if I was able, it would no doubt still get shit on by the public.
Sometimes people go, “Oh, this hippy, earthy band,” and those things are all playful until those assumptions and summations become oversimplifications and caricatures. Us saying ’interpersonal’ was from love, it was sincere. I wish people would trust that the breakup wasn’t related to some political thing.
Lenker: I think some things are designed to confuse people and I think that, with political language, you almost feel like you need to be well versed in it the way you would have to go to law school in order to understand contracts.
Krivchenia: Sometimes I feel like people are more interested in trapping other people than they are in hearing them.
Lenker: There’s always so much to learn and I don’t have an encyclopedic brain. I don’t know enough history and I’m not able to break down the political structures. There’s so much I don’t fully know, but I do know some basic-ass shit, like, killing other people is fucking wrong. War is completely fucked up and wrong. The government is doing the opposite of what it should be doing, which is caring for human beings and making sure everyone has enough for their basic things, like education and healthcare. The people in power should be in prison if prison should even be a thing.
Sorry if I’m clunky and inarticulate, but I know what I stand for. Music is the unifying language and that’s why I’m so drawn to it. It’s a generative force that allows people to stand shoulder to shoulder, and sing the same song together. And when we’re all singing the same song together, we don’t even have to have the conversation of who did you vote for, and all these trigger words that immediately make people feel that they’re in opposition to one another. So, when people do ask me political questions, I’m like, fuck. Am I gonna fuck up? How do I talk about this?
Lenker: Yeah, that was a hairy time. We had some shit we really needed to learn, see and understand, and when we saw it, we really took it to heart and worked really hard to understand what it was that wasn’t lining up.
Krivchenia: It’s really hard to be three people who are sitting watching this horrible genocide happen, and not knowing what to say as a band that’s helpful. Besides that, the war is horrible. We want it to end, and we’re raising money and things like that. In terms of being vocal about it, we’re also seeing all sorts of censorship against musicians who are speaking up about it.
Lenker: Even language, these words you’re saying right now feel dangerous. Like, some people say it’s not a war; it’s a fucking massacre. But I think people shouldn’t be quiet just because they’re worried of making a mistake. Everyone’s so scared to be perceived wrong that no one’s actually saying how they feel, and I think it can affect art negatively, too. I think I would rather face getting shit again for making more mistakes than be quiet because we’re afraid. That’s really so counterproductive. We have to have accountability to each other, and trust in one another’s baseline good. Like, yes, we are firmly against genocide. It’s absolutely terrible. But, I mean, even saying those types of words doesn’t feel like nearly enough. I think that people rely way too much on listening out for that one sentence from the band they love, as opposed to the actual work. Doing the most we can do goes way beyond saying the right things on a post. Most of the work we do we don’t even talk about or share.
Meek: We’ve put a lot of intentions into the statements that we have shared, and we’ve raised over $200,000 for Palestinian relief, and beyond that, we’re just continuing to develop our platforms so we can continue that kind of work.
Krivchenia: But there is that clammy feeling of it just not feeling enough whenever you say something about it. It’s this deep feeling of patheticness. We’re all watching this shit unfold on our phones all the time, and it makes for a very fraught relationship with those sorts of platforms in how you interface with your fans.
Lenker: What we do best is music. This album won’t fix any problems, but hopefully it gives people enough juice to feel like there is magic in the world, and still so much to live for and be here for; to energize us for what we are facing as a collective.