On Big Red Machine’s new album How Long Do You Think It’s Gonna Last?, Aaron Dessner put more focus on his voice than he really had before in his recorded music. He handles lead vocal duties on a handful of the album’s tracks, including “Magnolia,” for which the group shared a new lyric video visualizer today.
Dessner wrote of the song on Instagram, “Magnolia is one of the last songs I wrote for the album. It’s a song about wanting to save someone who is very dear to you from a proverbial fate they didn’t deserve or expect — and showing them empathy and encouragement to pick themselves up. The music is meant to be hopeful and cathartic and [Jason Treuting’s] drums bring so much power to it. I also somehow got away with soloing on acoustic guitar throughout much of the song. [Justin Vernon’s] harmonies and my brother [Bryce Dessner’s] string arrangement gave me the cover I needed to pull it off. Yet another incredibly beautiful music video by Michael Brown.”
Watch the “Magnolia” video above and revisit our review of How Long Do You Think It’s Gonna Last? here.
How Long Do You Think It’s Gonna Last? is out now via Jagjaguwar/37d03d. Get it here.
