Big Thief played MGM Music Hall – 10/21
Free-spirited folk-rockers Big Thief headlined a sold-out MGM with support from Lomelda.
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2025 finds Big Thief in something of a transitional period. Having parted ways with founding bassist Max Oleartchik last year, a band that had existed as a seemingly inseparable foursome for most of their decade-long ascent is enduring its first major shakeup. Following suit, their new record Double Infinity feels like a reset. Scaling back the ranging 20-song, 80-minute folk-rock sprawl of predecessor Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You, Infinity leans into dreamier textures and the help of session players and guests including ambient icon Laraaji. While Big Thief remain unmistakably themselves – anchored by singer/guitarist Adrianne Lenker’s engrossing lyrics – the record is undoubtedly something different for them, a collective effort bolstered by outside voices from a band that once presented as insular.
Unlike their NYC gig over the weekend, last week’s Boston show did not welcome those many collaborators on stage. Instead, the core trio of Lenker, guitarist Buck Meek and drummer James Krivchenia were joined only by touring bassist Joshua Crumbly, huddled in relatively close quarters at the center of the massive MGM stage. It was their biggest headlining show in Boston to date – a thorough sellout of 5,000-plus seats – but there was little in their presentation to suggest that the band was thinking much about it. Over the course of two hours and more than 20 songs, the foursome took their adoring audience on an uninhibited trip that felt as much like watching a friend’s band jam as it did a stop on a highly-publicized national tour.
In some sense, this has always been the Big Thief way. Whether at Lenker’s solo shows or their full-band affairs over the years, unreleased songs and ideas-in-progress have lent a restless creative energy to the proceedings. That Tuesday’s show opened with the first of a handful of brand new songs came as no surprise. From there, a generous chunk of Double Infinity was interspersed with spirited fan-favorites (“Shark Smile,” “Spud Infinity”) and the occasional Lenker solo detour. At times the setlist seemed to be manifesting on the fly, which lent both an upside of unpredictability and an unfocused energy to the night. Tuning breaks and stretches of silence were plentiful, songs were restarted, and an attempt to work one of Meek’s solo tunes into the mix was abandoned after only a few bars. There has long been a ramshackle quality to the band’s charm, but I’d be lying if I claimed the momentum never lagged.
Still, the crew could snap out of a temporary malaise at any second and lock into something spellbinding. “Not,” from 2019’s Two Hands, spiraled into satisfyingly Crazy Horse-adjacent territory, Dragon’s “Simulation Swarm” tapped into a driving, insistent rhythm, and non-album single “Vampire Empire” conjured a heartening mass singalong during the encore. And judging by the rapturous reception that greeted those moments and basically every other throughout the night, few in this massive crowd seemed to pay mind to issues of pacing. Big Thief don’t play to expectations, and their ever-growing audience seems perfectly at peace arriving without them and simply taking the ride.
Scroll for a gallery from the night, including openers Lomelda, below.
