Just a little sweetness is good, however Adrianne Lenker is aware of when it’s an excessive amount of for her. “It is best to have mine,” the Massive Thief singer and guitarist says to her bandmate Buck Meek, who performs lead guitar, sliding over her iced espresso. “I can’t drink the sugar.”
Lenker makes this type of evaluation usually, in a single kind or one other. When writing and performing with the group, she’ll generally flip her nationally delicate voice right into a snarl or a howl — resisting any temptation to ever let all of it get too candy. “Swallow poison, swallow sugar,” she sings on the Massive Thief music “All Evening All Day,” from the brand new album “Double Infinity.” “Generally they style the identical.” Getting complacent with an extra of an excellent factor, she perpetually appears to be reminding herself, may be lethal.
The restaurant — Kurrypinch in Thai City — is one in all Meek’s favorites, and he’s very happy to oblige in taking the drink off Lenker’s arms. (All three Massive Thief members have dabbled with the L.A. space, however solely Meek lives right here full time.) Rounded out by drummer James Krivchenia, the cosmic people act has tucked themselves right into a nook desk, and, at a look, seem as a number of the most unassuming rock stars you’ll ever discover. Smooth-spoken, well mannered to waitstaff, engaged with one another with out ever a lot as glancing at a cellphone.
However there are hippie-ish artist quirks in the event you begin to look nearer. Krivchenia’s tattered shirt seems older than he’s (36), and Lenker has a gold tooth that flashes when she smiles (the results of a bicycle accident a few years in the past). “Look what we acquired for later,” says Meek, 38, who retains his sun shades on (“the Michael Jordan Oakleys that I all the time needed as a child”), triumphantly pulling a grand slice of ahi tuna out of his backpack. There are oohs and aahs.
The plan is to cook dinner the fish up later tonight at rehearsal, the place Massive Thief is preparing for a tour that can carry the members to the biggest headlining present of their profession on the Hollywood Bowl on Saturday — a outstanding achievement for a band that’s hardly a family identify. However its fanbase is loyal — obsessive, even — having figured Lenker to be one of many nice songwriters of her technology. “To be sincere, I’m nervous to play these large exhibits,” Lenker, 34, admits to me as we make our approach by shared plates of Sri Lankan meals.
Massive Thief’s new album, “Double Infinity,” experiments boldly with music construction, drawing each criticism and reward for its unconventional strategy.
(Alex Viscius)
It’s been a gentle climb to date — simply steady momentum, one critically adored album after one other, till bam: They’re enjoying the Bowl the evening earlier than John Legend. “That’s truly one of the vital trippy issues,” Krivchenia says, “the place it’s like, ‘Actual love!’’’ — referencing the chorus from the band’s second-ever single, from 2016 — “and I’ll simply be, like, peeing in a Panera in Ohio.”
Lingering nerves apart, Lenker has been doing this lengthy sufficient that she doesn’t doubt the band’s skill to leap into the following stage. “We began out burning CDs and writing all of the titles on paper luggage,” she says. “Residing out of the van — we did that for years.” She remembers the “hundreds of handshakes and hugs and home-cooked meals” and nights spent sleeping on flooring. “We had been prepared for each step of it by the point we acquired there.”
Meek truly feels just like the problem for Massive Thief at a sure level was to maintain it from not rising — not less than too quick. He says there have been provides — that’s provides, with an s — from main labels, which the band has turned down as a way to preserve inventive management. “The work,” he figures, “was attempting to maintain it near the bottom and navigate the surface world, past our little collective of trusted collaborators.”
This well-established close-knit nature of the group’s DNA is why the rollout for “Double Infinity” has been surprisingly wrought, not less than by Massive Thief’s requirements. The band survived a literal divorce at one level — Lenker and Meek had been married for a number of years till 2018 — navigating that cut up with a public grace that might make Fleetwood Mac’s head spin. However they couldn’t work out maintain going with their longtime bass participant, Max Oleartchik, whose time with the band resulted in 2024. The information got here not all that lengthy after Massive Thief introduced, after which subsequently canceled, a pair of 2022 concert events in Tel Aviv, Israel, the place Oleartchik was born and raised.
Whether or not Oleartchik left on his personal phrases shouldn’t be particularly clear. The announcement cited “interpersonal causes,” and the band, now a trio, has patiently, repeatedly insisted in interview after interview over the previous few months that the choice was not about Israel, however reasonably only a matter of rising aside, not not like a romantic breakup. (Oleartchik couldn’t be reached for remark.)
No matter how or why, anyway, it’s a brand new period for Massive Thief. And with a leg of its chair all of a sudden gone, they responded by enlisting a lot of visitor musicians to function reinforcements within the studio through the making of “Double Infinity,” like bassist Joshua Crumbly, who shall be becoming a member of the band on tour, and revered new age musician Laraaji. It’s a swirling, buoyant album that wrestles with the insufficiencies of language to seize the complexity of the human expertise — complexities like, say, why a pal and collaborator you’ve spent a decade with needed to go his separate approach.
“Phrases are drained and tense / Phrases don’t make sense,” Lenker sings on “Phrases.” “Why do I’ve to elucidate myself,” she asks repeatedly on “Glad With You.” “Let me be incomprehensible,” she pleads on “Incomprehensible.” (That final music, in the event you learn the tea leaves of the lyrics, was written on July 7, 2024; the announcement that Oleartchik was out of the band got here 4 days later, on July 11, 2024.)
“Thanks,” Meek says, half joking with aid once I say that I don’t see the necessity to ask concerning the breakup with Oleartchik once more, since they’ve repeated themselves sufficient to different journalists already. “Interviews are exhausting basically,” Krivchenia provides. “Like, having that reflection that’s not your music. The file is one thing I can stand by and be like, ‘I’m pleased with that. That’s essentially the most lovely reflection of me. It’s me at my freest.’ Phrases are simply tougher.”
“Double Infinity” is an unpredictable file — a notable departure from the band’s earlier work not simply in its sonic richness but additionally in its need to interrupt the mildew of how a rock music is “supposed” to be put collectively. One music, “Grandmother,” options Laraaji singing wildly and searchingly excessive of Lenker’s vocals. And two others, “No Worry” and “Glad With You,” repeat lyrics like mantras because the music builds round them, filling up over 11 minutes of music with simply two stanzas of phrases. The album has acquired largely sturdy critiques, however it’s been considerably divisive all the identical, going through extra criticism than another Massive Thief album earlier than. (“Wait until you hear the following one we already made,” Meek grins. “It’s not what you count on.”)
Each Lenker and Meek admit they’ve learn a number of the less-than-glowing critiques, although they know they shouldn’t. “It’s undoubtedly the evil eye,” Meek jokes. However they love the file, and that’s what issues. “Not having to place a bridge [in a song],” Lenker says, “letting ourselves repeat one thing 44 instances as a result of it feels good — that took this lengthy to offer ourselves the permission and freedom to have the ability to do. And I feel in that expression there’s a lot depth, in the event you’re in search of it, and in the event you’re paying consideration.”
One vital overview caught with Lenker, although, which she remembers saying that the one factor “Double Infinity” has going for it “is that it’s uplifting.” “The thought that I had,” she says, getting animated, “was like, That’s no small factor! In these instances, if all we do is uplift? That’s wonderful.”
Within the identify of not letting something within the Massive Thief world get too candy, nevertheless, I inform Lenker that, as uplifting because the file is, there may be one half that made me fairly unhappy. “Let’s get actual,” she says, smiling, “simply inform me.”
Following longtime bassist Max Oleartchik’s departure, Massive Thief navigates a brand new period with visitor musicians and inventive reinvention.
(Alex Viscius)
I carry up the album nearer, “How May I Have Identified,” a deep, somber campfire epic that recounts a visit to Paris, with Lenker standing in entrance of the Eiffel Tower and discovering the enduring construction disappointingly “empty.” The music then takes her to the bridge on the Seine that was lined in tiny locks, which had been put there by {couples} as symbols of their love. “It jogged my memory,” she sings, “of everybody I had ever tried to say.” Listening to it introduced me again to this horrible, suffocating feeling of whenever you’re touring and seeing wonders of the world and it simply doesn’t make you are feeling higher.
“I believed [the Eiffel Tower] could be like, Ahhhh,” she says, remembering that journey. “However, like, it’s all lit up with fluorescent beams. These are simply concepts. We’re residing within the land of constructs, and that’s what this entire album is about — and that’s what all of our albums and the entire songs that we did get at. Like Neil Younger says, it’s one music. The place is love, the place is magnificence? The true human spirit — the place does that stay? That’s one thing that we’ll be excavating our entire lives.”
