By Paul Robicheau

Both experimental and welcoming, the double album proves more spontaneous in feel and expansive in style than past Big Thief outings.

Big Thief at the Newport Folk Festival in 2019. Photo: Paul Robicheau

Big Thief captivates under the quiet command of Adrianne Lenker, one of today’s most prolific and penetrating songwriters. The curious folk-rockers last dropped a pair of albums in 2019 before the singer/guitarist followed with two 2020 solo records, one of them just instrumental. So perhaps it shouldn’t surprise that Lenker and her bandmates stretched their pandemic horizons by recording a 20-song opus in the diverse rustic environs of upstate New York, California, Colorado, and Arizona.

Big Thief’s travels extended to the music beyond Lenker’s lyrical nods to nature on Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You, sure to remain among 2022’s best albums. Signatures remain in Lenker’s childlike voice, curling into higher registers, and fellow guitarist Buck Meek’s role in their glassy, gnarly textures — if to a lesser extent this time. Both experimental and welcoming, the double album proves more spontaneous in feel and expansive in style than past Big Thief outings, ushered by drummer James Krivchenia’s unfussy production.

“Change” aptly opens the album in the stark, somber vein that Big Thief often mines. “Change, like the sky, like the leaves, like a butterfly,” Lenker muses. “Would you live forever, never die, while everything around passes?”

The next track, “Time Escaping,” signals the metamorphosis with card-muted guitar strings conjuring a kalimba-like melodic flow reminiscent of the Grateful Dead’s “Fire on the Mountain.” Juxtaposition continues as guest Mat Davidson’s sawed fiddle introduces “Spud Infinity.” Lenker gets punchy about potatoes and freedom for “the celestial body” before the country-flavored tune rolls into a marching drum coda topped by the boing of her brother Noah’s jaw harp.

Cover art for Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You.

Her vocals often rise and fall as Lenker steadily unspools lyrics in soft cadences. Take “Sparrow,” her view on the Biblical fate of Eve, guided by the snake and “poison” apple. “I wish I’d have spoken to call her,” Lenker sings. “Before she found fabric to shawl her. Breasts bound and burdened with fiber.”

At other times, the music changes Lenker’s vocal approach. The ghostly title track finds her floating into Kate Bush range, while the center of the album drops into shrouded dream-pop, where the jangly “Little Things” and shard-tinged “Flower of Evil” subtly evoke shoegaze-era bands like Lush or the Cure.

The well-named “Blurred View” goes further down the sonic hole. Lenker hugs that gauzy cycle with hushed refrains over Krivchenia’s eerie synth wobble and Max Orleartchik’s pulsing fretless bass. Then “Red Moon” shifts back to fiddle-wound Americana, with Lenker giving a joyous shout-out to her grandma and breaking into a round of whistling.

At 80 minutes in length, Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You requires time to fully appreciate its nooks and crannies. The back end of the record contains some of its most straightforward and accessible tunes. The perky “Wake Me Up to Drive” (a common phrase for touring indie-rockers) rides a percolating drum machine, while “No Reason” elicits a campfire-style chorus and a breezy flute solo from Rich Hardy, a former Carole King sideman who Big Thief heard playing in a Rockies lookout tower. “Come together for a moment, look around and dissolve,” Lenker sings. “Like a feeling, like a flash, like a fallen eyelash, on your sweater, threading future from the past.”

Lenker also blurs her band and solo identities with fingerpicked solo acoustic tracks “Promise is a Pendulum” and “The Only Place,” a sweetly existential love song where she resolves “The only place that matters is by your side.”

Then the jazzy honky-tonk of “Blue Lightning” closes the band’s fifth album with Lenker coming full circle to a realization: “Yeah, I wanna live forever ’til I die.” As the song fades out, another voice breaks the studio silence. “OK, what should we do now?” In the case of Big Thief, anticipation only grows for the next horizon.

Big Thief plays Roadrunner on April 13.

Paul Robicheau served more than 20 years as contributing editor for music at the Improper Bostonian in addition to writing and photography for the Boston Globe, Rolling Stone, and many other publications. He was also the founding arts editor of Boston Metro.