Does a month go by without a member of Big Thief releasing a new batch of material? Adrianne Lenker put out her sixth solo project Bright Future to a wave of acclaim last year and a vast live album a few months ago, while Buck Meek has had lone projects ticking over for years. Combined with their full-band output, their productivity makes King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard look slothful by comparison. Yet there’s no indication that this veteran indie folk act is spreading itself thin, and Double Infinity is perhaps Big Thief’s most purposeful effort in years. 

Recorded at New York City’s The Power Station in early January, the band have described a process of playing nine hours a day with improvised arrangements and minimal overdubs to convey the white-hot spark of a live performance. What could be perceived as an indulgence feels like a necessary changing of the seasons for a trio straining towards renewed artistic vitality after the departure of long-time band member Max Oleartchik (guest spots from Laraaji, Hannah Cohen, June McDoom and Mikey Buishas adds to the sense of a band restlessly broadening their palate).  Shrugging off the shackles of a rigid recording process, or even a structured writing session, are constants in Lenker’s lyrics. ‘Let me be incomprehensible’ she begs in opener ‘Incomprehensible’, echoing Madonna’s claim that ‘words are useless, especially sentences’ on ‘Bedtime Story’ when she was trying to escape her past achievements and look to the future. That theme rears its head on the next track ‘Words’, when Lenker’s quivering countrified lilt declares ‘words don’t make sense’, a manifesto for escaping over-intellectualised instincts to stumble in whatever direction music takes them. 

The instrumentation isn’t as revolutionary for Big Thief as these opening salvos imply, but they do maintain the forceful pace of a three-piece placing rockets under each other’s chairs. They’ve also been unable to flee their knack for finesse and poetic unity. The album’s most measured song, ‘No Fear’, is a feat of expert arrangement, a simmering panic attack in which Lenker declaims ‘Nowhere, no table or chair, no country’ with the shaky tone of someone convincing themselves they’re fine while standing in a burning building. While an almost inordinate amount of literary nous is present (as it is on any Big Thief record), there’s also a striking simplicity, as on the simple repetition in ‘Grandmother’, where Lenker packs up her emotions ‘to turn it all into rock’n’roll’, a wish simultaneously earnest and grandiose; it could have sprung from Noel Gallagher as much as Lenker (few Big Thief songs could make that claim). Refrains like these slide in and out of view constantly, near-religious incantations struck upon in the excitement of the moment.

Commuting by bicycle into an arts facility in the chill of a New York winter hasn’t changed the trajectory of Big Thief substantially (we’re unlikely to hear Lenker’s attempt at EDM anytime soon), but it has exposed their sound to a whole new set of stimuli. Gone is their mannered Americana, replaced by shifting rhythms and a desire to tear down the folk edifice they’ve built. 

Double Infinity is released by 4AD on Friday 5 September; main picture: Daniel Arnold.