Prior to 2020, Aaron Dessner was known mainly for his work as the guitarist in The National. But after producing two albums for Taylor Swift, the musician career saw a healthy boost of attention. He’s just about to release an album as part of Big Red Machine, his project with Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon, which features more Swift collaborations. While some might be surprised that Swift is leaning into indie music, Dessner thinks that the genre has now become “a myth.”
Dessner recently spoke with The Irish Times ahead of Big Red Machine’s How Long Do You Think It’s Gonna Last? album, which is out his Friday. He detailed the LP’s writing process and his experience working with Swift. While many were shocked at the pop/indie rock crossover on Swift’s Folklore and Evermore albums, Dessner wasn’t fazed. To him, genres have been shifting for some time now:
“The boundaries between genres have been melting a long time. Indie music or alternative music is kind of a myth now. It used to be that way. But working with Taylor – we didn’t have any outside influence at all. There was never a moment when… I mean her record company didn’t even know [about the collaboration] until a few days before [release date]. There was no compromise in terms of what we were making.”
Elsewhere in the conversation, Dessner described the differences between working with Matt Berninger on The National and Vernon on Big Red Machine. “Matt, he’s much more of a performer. He gets lost in the emotion of it,” Dessner said. “It’s fairly crazy, I guess, where he eventually goes to. Whereas Justin kind of sinks into the music. In a way, he’s taking lots of risks musically. They’re just very different. Justin takes a long time between Bon Iver records. He doesn’t make stuff to make it. He has to feel really inspired.”
Read Dessner’s full interview with The Irish Times here.
How Long Do You Think It’s Gonna Last? is out 8/27 via Jagjaguwar/37d03d. Pre-order it here.
