It's A Bad Year For 2010s Indie Stars

Notes on the new Big Thief record and scores of other underwhelming 2025 LPs

This week Big Thief put out a new album. It’s called Double Infinity, and it’s their first record since 2022’s Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You. I called that double-album a masterpiece. Double Infinity, meanwhile, is not. In fact, I think it’s easily the weakest release of their illustrious career. Now, I might be in the minority on that, given the high Metacritic score. (Though, as we recently discussed, Metacritic scores are problematic for a number of reasons.) But I think we can all agree that this band, one of the most acclaimed in indie for a decade, has entered a new phase, even if we might differ on what exactly that phase is.

In my review, I begin by talking about the unique chemistry of the four band members, which has both been the core of their appeal and the thing that detractors love to mock (due to their “polyamorous press photos, where they huddle together so tightly they resemble a literal four-headed creature”). Last year, bassist Max Oleartchik left the band, under something of a cloud. And that inevitably changed their intra-group chemistry, in ways that I find ultimately detrimental to the music:

After trying to record as a trio, fruitlessly, they entered New York City’s Record Plant with a small army of collaborators, including 82-year-old ambient multi-instrumentalist Laraaji as well as several percussionists and backing singers, swelling their ranks to 13 musicians. (Joshua Crumbly is currently playing bass.) In the studio, they jammed for nine hours a day, and over the course of three weeks carved out nine songs. And those tracks ultimately diverged from their usual crunchy, folk-rock sound. Guitars were de-emphasized in the mix in favor of an amorphous wash of loops, samples, zither drones, and repetitive, mantra-like lyrical and melodic motifs.

It’s a marked reinvention that recalls bold pivots like R.E.M.’s late-’90s album Up, which also arrived after the departure of a core band member turned them into a three-piece augmented by auxiliary musicians. R.E.M. similarly attempted to push beyond their trademark folk rock by embracing decidedly non-folk-rock elements (drum machines, squawky synths, downbeat choruses).

On Double Infinity, Big Thief sound questing and expansive, purposely blurring instruments together to create gauzy soundscapes. It’s an ambitious, sumptuous, somewhat disorienting, and vaguely frustrating stew. In terms of sounding nothing like their previous albums, it is undoubtedly a progression. Whether it is an improvement (or up to their usual standards) is less definitive. I can admire certain parts of this record, but after playing it for weeks, I still can’t fully warm to it. It’s liquid-y and intangible, lacking the tactile flesh-and-blood sturdiness I expect from this band. It’s not a bad album by any means; It’s a solid effort that doesn’t come close to blowing me away, and I’m used to this band blowing me away. If Dragon felt like an epic bear hug, listening to Double Infinity is like trying, over and over, to embrace a cloud of dry-ice smoke.

Again, a lot of people like this album more than me. And maybe they’ll still feel that way in six months. (Or maybe I’ll change my opinion by then.) But pulling back a bit, Double Infinity reminds me of other records put out in 2025 by indie acts who established themselves as stars and critical darlings in the 2010s. To my ears, these records are also linked by their production styles (half-baked and/or overblown), songwriting quality (mixed-to-uninspired) and vibe (underlying tentativeness that feels a lot like artistic aimlessness). Put another way: The juice just isn’t there.

On Indiecast, Ian Cohen and I have talked about this throughout the year. It comes up every time a new underwhelming album by a 2010s legacy indie artist drops. It’s happened enough by now that it officially feels like one of 2025’s prevailing trends. Last month, there was Guitar, the very weak-sauce comeback by Mac DeMarco. This summer, there were forgettable efforts from Lorde and Haim. From the spring, you might remember (or not) the exceedingly okay music put out by Lucy Dacus, Julien Baker and Torres, Japanese Breakfast, and Car Seat Headrest.

These albums aren’t necessarily disasters. I like some of them more than others. But I don’t love any of them, and you probably don’t, either. They are, undoubtedly, examples of “post-peak” work, just as Double Infinity (to me) is.

Ian and I sometimes joke about the Centipede Hz era of post-aughts indie, referring to Animal Collective’s 2012 follow-up to the group’s zeitgeist-capturing album from 2009, Merriweather Post Pavilion. That year also saw records by fellow 2000s acts like Grizzly Bear and Dirty Projectors that were, at the time at least, considered to be disappointments. By the following year, a new crop of indie and indie-adjacent acts emerged (including Lorde and Haim) that signaled the end of the era those artier outfits of old signified.

The good news for Big Thief and co. is that albums like Centipede Hz and Grizzly Bear’s Shields and Dirty Projectors’ Swing Lo Magellan have aged well since then. But it’s still nevertheless true that certain artists come to be associated with particular decades, and they don’t always (or often) carry over to the next as “definitional” bedrocks. Sometimes it happens a little later in that next decade — in our Double Infinity conversation, I referenced Deerhunter’s “just fine” 2016 effort Fading Frontier — but the change always comes eventually. It’s like that scene in Boogie Nights where it’s now the 1980s and Dirk Diggler sees the latest porn-star leading man Johnny Doe sitting with Jack Horner at the nightclub where he was discovered in the ’70s. I hate to quote The Eagles, but there’s always going to be a “new kid in town” in the business we call show.

I feel like 2025 is a 2012-esque pivot point for indie rock. Later this month, there will be new albums from a band I would argue is already a definitional 2020s indie act (Wednesday’s Bleeds) and another that seems to be on their way (Geese’s Getting Killed). No matter your opinion on those groups, they are clearly the new kids in town. They are Johnny Doe. They have the juice.

I want to tread lightly here. I’m not saying Big Thief stinks now, or that the other artists are bound for oblivion. They are all, still, clearly popular, and they all surely have lots of good music left in them. But we all know when an artist or band has “the juice” and when they don’t. It’s the difference between being in your “reputation-building” period and your “reputation settled” one. Besides, nobody holds on to the juice forever. (Unless you die young, which is a terrible option in every other possible way, obviously.)

Speaking of pivots! On the latest Indiecast, I recommended Ain’t In It For My Health, the latest album by country singer Zach Top. Most throwback country artists either emulate the Outlaw ’70s (Sturgill, Childers, Margo Price) or the honky-tonk ’60s (Charley Crockett). Top departs from the pack by zeroing in on ’80s and ’90s style neo-traditionalism — a lot of George Strait, a lot of Alan Jackson, a little bit of Dwight Yoakam and a pinch of Jimmy Buffett. It’s a lot of fun, though I wish it had come out in June rather than the end of August. I talk a lot about patio music — this is pontoon boat music. I need to hear this out on a lake before it freezes over.

Finally, this is me in front of Bob Dylan’s boyhood home in Hibbing, MN. I was there last week, and the house’s owner, the Dylan super-duper fan Bill Pagel, gave me and my family a private tour. It exceeded my expectations! Bill has a museum in the basement with some frankly incredible Dylan rarities. I could tell you about it, but I would prefer that you listen to the podcast I recorded for Never Ending Stories.

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One last last thing: As I recently contemplated the moment when I eventually monetize this newsletter, I had what I think is a cool idea. It’s called Catalog Club, and it’s like a book club but with discographies. Every month, I would announce a discography that I’m going to write about. For artists with small catalogs (The Smiths, Joy Division, etc.), I’ll cover all the records. For those with big catalogs, I’ll focus on a particular era or decade (Bowie in the ’70s, Prince in the ’80s, etc.). The idea, hopefully, is that you guys will listen along with me and offer your own thoughts in the comments. (And also pitch me future discographies to cover.)

Do you like this idea or nah? Is it something you might pay a bit to participate in? Let me know in the comments!