Big Thief's *Sometimes, Forever* is a sixty-eight-minute study in restraint and earned patience. Recorded unhurried at Studio G Brooklyn, the album captures raw authenticity—every breath, every fingernail scrape—through technical precision deployed in service of emotional depth rather than display. James Krivchenia's responsive drumming and Buck Meek's considered guitar work create space for Adrianne Lenker's voice to exist without ornament. This is music that demands stillness and rewards deep listening.
There is a moment in “Certainty” where Adrianne Lenker’s voice cracks on a single syllable and the whole band seems to lean into it like they’d been waiting for that exact imperfection to arrive.
Sometimes, Forever is sixty-eight minutes long and it earns every one of them. Recorded mostly at Studio G Brooklyn with engineer Dom Monks, the sessions were unhurried in a way that most records can’t afford to be anymore. The band had been living in each other’s pockets for years — Adrianne Lenker, Buck Meek on guitar, Max Oleander on bass, James Krivchenia on drums — and it shows. Not in a way that reads as comfortable or complacent. In a way that reads as trust.
The Room They Made
Krivchenia has said he wanted the percussion to feel like it was being discovered in real time, and you can hear exactly what he means. He’s not driving the songs so much as responding to them. There’s a moment in “Spud Infinity” where the rhythm seems to dissolve completely and then reconstitute itself from somewhere else entirely, and it’s among the stranger and more beautiful things I’ve heard a drummer do without showing off about it.
Meek’s guitar work here deserves its own paragraph. He has this quality — a kind of benevolent restraint — where every note he doesn’t play is as considered as the ones he does. On “Time Escaping” the two guitars wrap around each other in this doubled spiral that makes the song feel like it’s always been playing, like you’re tuning into something mid-transmission.
Lenker wrote most of this after Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You, which came out the same year in February. Two albums in 2022. Both of them good. That shouldn’t be possible.
What It Actually Sounds Like
The production is dry in the best way. No reverb shimmer softening the corners. No compression fattening the transients into something more radio-ready. Monks captured the room without romanticizing it. When Lenker breathes between lines, you hear the breath. When her fingernails graze the fretboard between chord changes, that’s on the record too.
“Blowing Mind” opens with this low, woody acoustic tone and builds into something almost psychedelic by the end — not through effects but through repetition and patience. The band understands that duration is its own kind of texture.
“Palm Trees” is the one that got me the first time through. It’s a simple song structurally, but it carries this ache that I can’t fully explain and have stopped trying to. Lenker doesn’t perform emotion so much as let it pass through her. There’s a difference, and most singers never find it.
The record closes with “Blue Lightning,” which runs nearly eleven minutes and feels like it could go on longer without overstaying its welcome. They don’t resolve it so much as let it settle. Like dust. Like the way a room sounds after everyone leaves.
Put this one on when the house is quiet. Give it the good speakers. Let it take its time.