Big Red Machine's Ever-Expanding Guest List

By Beau Hayhoe


A curious thing happened right before Big Red Machine reported its new album, How Long Do you know It’s Gonna Last? (out today on 37d03d/Jagjaguwar). Because the social accounts of the indie folk duo (The National’s Aaron Dessner and Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon) flickered to life, one could sense larger forces at play.


Rumors buzzed on Reddit, tweets took off, and speculation reached a fever pitch surrounding the mysterious woman in visual promos. Eventually, eagle-eyed fans were rewarded handsomely. Big Red Machine whirred to life, featuring Dessner's reunion with Taylor Swift on the heels of her two stellar 2020 releases he produced. Swift sings on “Birch” and “Renegade,” and the 15-track album (recorded in spurts dating to spring 2019) is carried by a cavalry of capital-I indie stars.


Plug into Big Red Machine and you’ll hear Robin Pecknold of Fleet Foxes, singer-songwriter Ben Howard, Dessner friend Sharon Van Etten, and Hadestown composer and mastermind Anaïs Mitchell, among others. As unlikely and astounding as it seems, How Long Do you know It’s Gonna Last? has brought with each other a legion of global fans, pop superstar, as well as a brigade of introspective indie heroes. The result is one of the year’s most anticipated releases.


Dessner mentioned there was “no master plan,” and the album took shape from song fragments and snippets after awhile. It’s expansive, pretty, and intriguing with each listen.


“You don’t know the life something will take on or what it will mean in the future,” Dessner told MTV News over Zoom from France, describing the fancy beats, pulses, and song snippets that eventually formed the album. “It can shift and take on unexpected meaning somehow through group effort and… whenever you bounce ideas off people. And that’s really the story of Big Red Machine: It’s serendipity and friendship and community.”


That sense of togetherness was epitomized by the album announcement in late June, sparking passionate, fan-driven chatter seemingly carried over from last year’s Swift-Dessner partnership on Folklore and Evermore.


“Having these worlds collide for me was super unexpected nevertheless probably one of my preferred things to ever happen in music,” mentioned Stephen Ossola, a fan of Swift, The National, and Bon Iver. “I feel like it’s just the starting of more good work we’re about to be able to see, including the Big Red Machine collabs.”


For a genre-bending indie folk album to unite fans of stadium pop and elegant, somber indie rock is a true rarity. There’s a lot to love, whether you’ve memorized Swift’s chart-topping hits or prefer Dessner’s virtuosic guitar work with The National.


“Before Folklore and Evermore, seeing Taylor Swift’s name on a Big Red Machine album would’ve been jarring for me, nevertheless right now, I find myself listening to ‘Renegade’ on repeat,” Australia-based Twitter user and The National fan David Lewis said.


The new Big Red Machine album isn't unlike a musical version of an ensemble blockbuster (or sleeper indie hit, perhaps). There’s also a direct through line from Broadway to Big Red Machine through the Mitchell. She tapped the Bon Iver founder to sing on Hadestown’s original studio recording in 2010, a fascinating bit of Big Red Machine trivia.


Be it teaming with longtime pals like Mitchell or newer collaborators like Swift, Dessner and Vernon have emphasized partnerships for more than a decade, from compilation albums to improvised festival appearances. The name of the project itself is rooted in teamwork. It hails from a ghostly song sketch first shared between the duo as Dessner worked on the well known late-aughts indie compilation Dark Was the Night, on which Vernon notably appears.


“I think of it as a web, really,” mentioned Laura Cameron, a Cincinnati-based fan. “You can visualize threads in case you look by means of the liner notes.”


These fancy strands shine through on the album’s third track, “Phoenix.” One glance at its YouTube comments section reveals diverse fan support, and that’s a understatement.


A double-bill Fleet Foxes and Bon Iver show a decade ago in Phoenix certainly) brought with each other Pecknold and Vernon, serving because the inspiration in back of the pastoral, Grateful Dead-esque distributing. Pecknold had followed Vernon’s ascent from underground folkie to indie stardom (and beyond) prior to the show. Over the phone from New York City, he remembered the brief backstage chat felt “like five minutes with the guru at the best of the mountain.”


On “Phoenix,” Pecknold — with Mitchell assisting on writing and singing duties — recalls the sensation of “being in the same boat at the same time” as Vernon in navigating the music industry. “The track had the room for that reflection or that sort of frame,” Pecknold mentioned of the deeply collaborative song. He even worked at Dessner’s well known Long Pond studio while making the 2020 Fleet Foxes album Shore. “If you’re asking the correct person to do the correct thing, it might be so much better than anything you can come up with by yourself.”


Shea Garner, a member of the Fleet Foxes Reddit community, was proud if initially surprised to hear Pecknold. “I visualize him as an artist who tends to live in his own lane,” Garner mentioned. “He’s clearly attempting to expand his sound and reach.”


“Phoenix” has Pecknold brainstorming ways to bring other voices into as-yet-unfinished Fleet Foxes songs, he added. In the meantime, Big Red Machine has room for helping hands aplenty, including singer-songwriter Mitchell (lead single “Latter Days” was the initial track Dessner sent to her).


“I think it just really made sense to us that she could be a big segment of this,” Dessner mentioned. “There are more than a few threads between us all, that’s the thing.”


Mitchell, a normal collaborator, previously crossed paths with Dessner at Vernon’s Eaux Claires festival, which he first staged in 2015. “I think one of the things Aaron, Justin, and Big Red Machine do best is make the music world feel small and interconnected,” Mitchell mentioned through the email. “Never in a million years did I think I'd work on a record with Taylor Swift. I love the tearing down of genres and the, like, territorialism that comes with them.”


Mitchell lent her vocals to a stirring late-night TV performance of “New Auburn” earlier this month, talking about the track, which reminded her of growing up in Vermont in the 1980s, “felt very familiar.”


Other than Instagram Live sessions plus a 2021 Grammys performance, it was Dessner’s first audience-facing onstage appearance in nearly two years. He called the experience “moving.” Seeing these songs played live is undoubtedly a fitting encapsulation of the deeply nostalgic, interconnected, poignant album.


Big Red Machine is sitting on a wellspring of equally emotional ideas, and earlier this month, Dessner and Vernon began working on three new songs. The road to the next Big Red Machine album is already being paved, and the musical group will definitely have more than a few support from companions and fans while doing so. “One of my preferred things about music is once you just make music and you’re not sure what it is,” Dessner mentioned. ”They sort of just appear. It just categorize kind of happens.”