There's a perfect record nestled within the engaging sprawl of Big Thief's new double album

“Ok?” Adrianne Lenker’s voice inserts the two-letter term at the very start of Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You, and it’s unclear how she means it. An adjective? Adverb? Or a discourse marker—an acknowledgement that you understand what someone is offering? Given the intimate musical kinship with her bandmates, and the 80-plus minutes of music that follow, it could be all three: a singer wondering, asking, and assuring, all at the same time, that it’s going to be all right.

Leaving room for ambiguity and interpretation—letting the listener contribute their own sensibilities and emotions—has always been an essential element of Big Thief’s music. Indeed, one of their best songs, “Not,” off the band’s second album from 2019, Two Hands, is remarkable precisely for conjuring a passionate feeling wholly from a slow-burn recitation of negatives; telling the audience what it isn’t, and letting them determine what, then, it actually is. And if the sprawling new double album, Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You, doesn’t offer any easy answers, it certainly suggests some awe-inspiring possibilities.

Recorded in four different locations over the course of nearly half a year (The Catskills, Topanga Canyon, Colorado Rockies, and Tucson, Arizona), this is an album that believes in the unifying power of music. Never mind that there are distinct sounds and patterns that emerge from each spoke of this quadrifurcated process; when sequenced all together, the individual peccadilloes and tones brought from the respective studios join up, Voltron-like, in a prototypical example of the sum being greater than its parts. And if not all of those parts feel equally essential, well, isn’t that almost part of the experience—a big, ambitious, uncertain project that attempts to fold in every element of the band, like it was playing a day-long set and didn’t want you to miss anything? Especially because, for the first time, a Big Thief record finds room for some previously marginalized feelings: contentment, fun … even levity.

There’s a sense of ease saturating the record, people finding joy in the communal act of creation. That’s true even on darker, more intense tracks, like “Blurred View,” which closes out the first half of the album with a pulsing bass and hushed, passionate vocals, like the insularity of mid-period Radiohead, a song turning back in on itself with ferociously minimalist buzz. Isolated, it might feel more of a piece with some of the group’s deadly serious earlier material. But here, it’s the equivalent of a friend pulling you off to the side during a celebration to share something important; yes, it’s somber, but only one part of the story.

And what a story it is, containing such multitudes. Lenker’s lyrical obsessions are in full force here—the immensity of love and loss, the unspoken connections that unite us all in the face of the enormity of the cosmos, the perpetual push-and-pull between our innocence and cynicism—but filtered through an ever-shifting array of styles. There’s the jam-band rhythms of “Time Escaping,” with its affected guitars and arpeggiated synth, which wouldn’t be out of place on Animal Collective’s new album. There’s the reverb-drenched shoegaze majesty of “Flower Of Blood,” which honestly sounds like something Pearl Jam might’ve come up with during its Riot Act era. And there’s “No Reason,” maybe the sunniest and sweetest-sounding melody the band has yet put to tape, and which features an honest-to-god flute solo.

Still, for every sonic experiment, ranging from the sound of breaking icicles on the title track to the accordion and distant drum machine powering “Wake Me Up To Drive,” there’s an equal commitment to the back-to-basic sound of a folk band rediscovering the simple pleasures of a basic riff and an easygoing rhythm. These throwback vibes litter the record, but are maybe best exemplified by the playful “Spud Infinity,” which announces its country-bluegrass influences right from the start, with fiddle (courtesy of Mat Davidson, who turns up on most of the band’s Colorado-derived tracks) and lively jaw harp (played by Lenker’s brother, Noah) setting the tone, as though Blink Melon had stopped by the studio to help pen a tune.

“Little Things” fuses these competing traditionalist and experimental tendencies, downright pop in its approach and sounds (for brief moments, it approaches Cranberries-like levels of dream-pop lushness), yet making room for guitarist Buck Meek to bend and pull at his strings to powerful effect, while Lenker conjures the impressions of a romance that overtakes your mind: “I see you in the yard, drinking a beer / Leaving me undressed like some cheap classic movie… You were inside of me, kissing my mouth.” The singer also seems to have learned a few things from her excellent solo albums, as “Promise Is A Pendulum” is all her and her guitar, while “Dried Roses” pairs some minimal fiddle to her plaintive acoustic ballad.

The sensation of an Americana-loving bar band at last call continues on other tracks, to greater—and, sometimes, lesser—effect. “Love Love Love” opens almost in media res, as though we’re privy to some intimate, panicked confession (“I’m leaving your love, I’m scared to die alone”), like an angry Aimee Mann, albeit one with a very Neil Young-like guitar solo at the end. (Perhaps the comparison is so obvious and oft-repeated at this point as to be a given, but the Canadian master of the form, along with CSNY, remains a central reference point for Big Thief’s music.) But “Red Moon,” with its standard-issue bluegrass riff and genial ambling vibe, is the rare offering that sounds almost generic, like it could’ve been written by any number of bands—something to which “Blue Lightning,” the otherwise lovable ending tribute to Lenker’s bandmates, also falls victim.

Through even the weaker tracks, though, Lenker and her knack for indelible imagery hold court. She’s gained increasing mastery over her voice, such that it can slip from a pleasing, honeysuckle croon to a raspy, weathered cry to a Dylan-esque patter that can summon a fey, almost childlike bent, as on the what-does-it-all-mean thoughtfulness of “Simulation Swarm.” Across Dragon New Warm Mountain, she puts expressive, elliptical imagery center stage, but expertly drops in little hints of open-hearted pain and passion here and there—almost like a crack showing in a facade of allegorical expressionism. Be it the confession in opener “Change” (“Still, I find / you are always on my mind”) or the late reveal in “12000 Lines” (“Forgiveness, all the money in the world won’t buy it”), these little dropped moments of vulnerability are so much more powerful than a song-length plea to be taken back.

Make no mistake: Even with some stumbles, this is the sound of a band in its prime, just beginning to discover the extent of its powers and bursting at the seams creatively. The very thing that makes the music occasionally feels half-realized (the loose, everything-and-the-kitchen-sink approach) is also what makes it so potent—the feeling that this is lightning-in-a-bottle material that needs to be let free or else it will dissipate.

Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You is like many of the great double albums, in that it could potentially have been a masterpiece, had there been a more judicious selection of material. But that also means that, start to finish, this record contains a masterpiece; and if you find yourself merrily nodding along to a surfeit of material along the way, there’s nothing wrong with that. “So much to share, so much to share,” Lenker sings at one point. She’s not kidding.