Big Red Machine - How Long Do You Think It’s Gonna Last? review | Alexis Petridis's album of the week

The Guardian 0

(Jagjaguwar)
Aaron Dessner and Justin ‘Bon Iver’ Vernon recruit Taylor Swift, Fleet Foxes and more for this album full of misty autumnal beauty – and a quiet punch

Aaron Dessner cuts a very low-profile figure, even by the standards of both bookish US alt-rockers and blue-chip pop collaborators, neither of whom require otherworldly charisma or an outrageous image. Put it this way: the New York Times recently ran a lengthy profile piece, lauding his achievements – his work on Taylor Swift’s multi-platinum, Grammy-winning 2020 album Folklore; its follow-up Evermore and her ongoing project to re-record her entire back catalogue; the National’s 20 year career, including their own Grammy for 2017’s Sleep Well Beast; his collaboration with Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon as Big Red Machine – and illustrated it with a photo not of Dessner, but his brother Bryce. An easy mistake to make – the Dessner brothers are twins – but nevertheless.

Dessner, though, seems happy with quiet anonymity. He had to be coaxed from the background to add three lead vocals to Big Red Machine’s second album, and would doubtless balk at the notion of this collective being a supergroup, although that’s precisely the label How Long Do You Think It’s Gonna Last? would have earned them in a previous era. As well as Dessner and Vernon, the album variously features Swift, Fleet Foxes’ Robin Pecknold, Sharon Van Etten, This Is the Kit, Anaïs Mitchell – the singer-songwriter whose 2010 album Hadestown begat the multiple Tony-winning Broadway musical of the same name – Ben Howard, Lisa Hannigan, My Brightest Diamond’s Shara Nova, and Naeem Juwan, the rapper formerly known as Spank Rock.