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Big Red Machine talks new album, childhood memories and possible Asia visit
Fronted by Aaron Dessner and Justin Vernon, the indie duo’s new album features megawatt talents such as Taylor Swift, Fleet Foxes, Ilsey and Anaïs Mitchell.
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A collage artwork for the album's single "Renegade", which features American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift (lower right). (Collage by Graham Tolbert. Photo by Graham Tolbert and James Reynolds). (Big Red Machine/Graham Tolbert and James Reynolds)
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em>Fronted by Aaron Dessner and Justin Vernon, the indie duo’s second album How Long Do You Think It’s Gonna Last? features megawatt talents such as Taylor Swift, Fleet Foxes, Ilsey, and Anaïs Mitchell. Will they finally spread their wings to Asia this time?
Three years since the release of their self-titled debut album, American indie duo Big Red Machine—consisting of The National’s Aaron Dessner and Bon Iver’s frontman Justin Vernon—have finally released their sophomore record on Aug. 27, titled How Long Do You Think It’s Gonna Last? Their latest album is both a music project pioneered by the duo and a manifestation of Dessner’s musical vision, with Vernon taking a step back out of the spotlight.
Safe to say, a lot has happened to the duo—Dessner, in particular—since they first launched Big Red Machine in 2018. As a member of The National, Dessner continued his streak of critical adulation for the band’s 2019 album I Am Easy to Find and a Grammy Award for his song writing and production for Taylor Swift’s 2020 masterstroke Folklore. On top of that, he produced The Lone Bellow’s fourth studio album Half Moon Light and UK singer-songwriter Eve Owen’s Don’t Let the Ink Dry.
“I feel like I’m always trying to grow and that’s one of the reasons why I collaborate so much,” said Dessner to The Jakarta Post via Zoom on Aug. 31. “You learn more when you step outside of your own shadow and, like, allow yourself to be vulnerable and work with someone new or, you know, someone you haven’t met before. That’s when you start to, like, ‘Oh, I can change what I’m doing!’ or ‘This is something new!’ or a new feeling. So that happened a lot over the last few years.”
Another takeaway from Dessner’s recent experiences is his newfound confidence as an artist “after making so many records”—including in experimenting with a different sound going forward. However, he still retains a certain degree of caution when it comes to “taking risks”.
“I don’t take risks just to take them. I think my way of making music, sometimes there’s definitely, like, big risks and big changes. But I think most of them are just [for the sake of] trying to make something that I can believe in and that I think it’s honest.”
Shifting his focus to Big Red Machine, Dessner felt determined to apply his collaborative experience from the last few years to what would eventually be their second studio album. A prior deliberation between Dessner and Vernon led to “a conceptual idea” of which their new record should take the shape of a “multitude of voices”, akin to a book in which the characters are “interrelated”. However, Dessner does not consider their new project as a compilation album.
