There are few better rooms for a band like Big Thief than no room at all, and on Thursday, September 24, 2026, the open-air Malkin Bowl in Stanley Park proved the ideal setting for one of indie rock's most quietly extraordinary live acts. Out on their Somersault Slide 360 Tour behind the new album Double Infinity, Adrianne Lenker and company traded polish for presence, chasing each song wherever it wanted to go under the trees.
Porches opened, Aaron Maine's long-running project setting an intimate, slightly frayed tone that suited the night perfectly.
Big Thief opened on “No Fear” and settled quickly into the loose, telepathic interplay that defines them. Lenker's voice, cracked and intimate one moment and soaring the next, sat at the centre of everything, with Buck Meek's guitar curling around it, and the set moved easily between hushed new songs, a solo turn on Lenker's own “Real House” and the aching “Shoulders.” Nothing felt rehearsed to death; everything felt alive.
The peaks were where the band stretched out. A towering “Not” built into a squalling guitar epic, “Simulation Swarm” and “Vampire Empire” (which got a charming false start and a laugh) showed off their range, and “Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You” drifted out over the park like a lullaby. For all the noise they can make, their real power is restraint.
There was no formal encore, just a generous two-hour set played straight through, and it ended on a lovely, characteristically Big Thief note: with about five minutes left, Lenker simply asked the crowd what they wanted to hear, and closed on their choice, “Incomprehensible.” It was the kind of unguarded, in-the-moment gesture that makes this band feel less like a concert and more like a gathering. A spellbinding night in the park.
