Mary, Haley, Matthew, Andrew, Evelyn, Jacob. These are among the personalities Adrianne Lenker, the singer-guitarist and primary creative force behind Big Thief, names on her group’s sophomore album, Capacity. On its third record, U.F.O.F. (short for “Unidentified Flying Object Friend”), she expands the roll call: Jodi, Caroline, Violet, Betsy, Jenni. Some of these characters are her family: Andrew, from Capacity’s “Mythological Beauty,” is the older brother she never knew; Violet, from the new song “Cattails,” is her great-grandmother. Some are friends, some are lovers, and some are fragments of herself. In her porous alto, Lenker summons them like spirits. Their lingering presence gives Big Thief’s music a sense of community—a warm, lived-in quality quite unlike anything else that exists in the realm of indie rock.
For Big Thief, ancestry has…