From the album Double Infinity
This song thinks it's about choosing aging over beauty standards, but it's actually about trying to opt out of being looked at while structuring the entire argument around appearance. The lover vanishes after Thunder Bay and she spends the rest of the trip alone with childhood junk, announcing she's entering a new phase of life that looks suspiciously like the old one: still explaining herself, still framing everything through how she'll be seen.
Driving with my lover, we missed our plane / So we added on the hours to see the lupine flowers
The lover exists only as someone to drive with, then disappears completely once the trip turns inward. By Thunder Bay, the 'we' becomes 'I' and stays that way. The relationship becomes background scenery the moment she starts thinking about herself.
In two days it's my birthday and I'll be thirty-three / That doesn't really matter next to eternity
She undercuts her own birthday sentiment immediately, which is maybe the most relatable move in the song. But 'everything I see from now on will be somethin' new' is a wild claim for someone literally traveling with childhood keepsakes. She's declaring newness while dragging Mr. Bear along for the ride.
'I'm afraid of getting older', that's what I've learned to say / Society has given me the words to think that way
This frames aging anxiety as learned language, not real fear. It's a solid move. But the song never interrogates why she's still performing the counter-argument so carefully, naming every silver hair and wrinkle like evidence in a trial. Rejecting the script doesn't mean you've stopped reading from one.
Let me dance in front of people without a care / Let me be naked alone with nobody there
These two lines sit next to each other like they're the same wish, but they're opposites. Dancing 'in front of people' means being seen. Being 'naked alone' means no audience. She wants both permission to be watched and permission to disappear. The song doesn't resolve this because it might not be resolvable.
Incomprehensible, let me be
She wants to be incomprehensible but the song is actually extremely clear. Linear road trip, articulate thoughts about aging, neatly structured verses. The plea is for permission to stop making sense to other people, but she can't stop explaining herself even inside the wish. I'm not sure that's a flaw. It might just be the real subject.
This is a song about wanting to be free from being understood that accidentally maps exactly how much energy that takes. The best moment might be 'stuff stuffed in my underwear' , chaotic, specific, resisting elegance. It's the only line that doesn't sound like it's trying to convince anyone of anything, which makes it the closest she gets to actually being incomprehensible.
Incomprehensible by Big Thief presents itself as a rejection of beauty standards in favor of aging, but in Scalpel's line-by-line reading, the song actually reveals a contradiction, where the narrator tries to escape being observed while building her entire argument around appearance. After her lover disappears following Thunder Bay, she's left alone with memories and announces a new life phase that mirrors the old one, still caught in explaining herself and viewing everything through the lens of how she'll be perceived.
"Incomprehensible" by Big Thief explores she wants permission to stop explaining, aging as something you perform for an audience, childhood junk you can't throw away, and double numbers and odd ones. The central thread is she wants permission to stop explaining: The word 'incomprehensible' functions as a plea for freedom from legibility, but the entire song is her making herself understood , carefully laying out her thoughts on aging, beauty, childhood, time. These themes come from Scalpel's line-by-line analysis of the lyrics.
"Incomprehensible" by Big Thief was released on June 3, 2025 on the album "Double Infinity". Scalpel's analysis covers the full lyrics of the 2025 release.
Scalpel's line-by-line analysis of "Incomprehensible" by Big Thief lands here: This is a song about wanting to be free from being understood that accidentally maps exactly how much energy that takes. The best moment might be 'stuff stuffed in my underwear' , chaotic, specific, resisting elegance.