BIG RED MACHINE

How Long Do You Think It’s Gonna Last? (Opaque Red 2LP Set)

Ever since childhood, learning to play various instruments in a suburban Cincinnati basement alongside his brother Bryce, Aaron Dessner has consistently sought an emotional outlet and deep human connection through music – be it as a primary songwriter in The National, a founder and architect of beloved collaboration-driven music festivals. Through it all, Dessner has brought together an unlikely community of musicians that share his impulse to connect, celebrate and, most of all, process emotion and experience through music.

This generous spirit and desire to push music forward has never been more deeply felt than on Big Red Machine’s “How Long Do You Think It’s Gonna Last?,” the second album from Dessner’s ever-morphing project with Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon. In 2008, while assembling material for the charity compilation “Dark Was the Night,” Dessner sent Vernon a song sketch titled “big red machine”. Vernon interpreted “big red machine” as a beating heart and finished the song accordingly – a metaphor Dessner says “still sticks with me today. This project goes to many places and is always on some level about experimentation, but it shines a light on why I make music in the first place, which is an emotional need. It’s one of my therapies and one of the ways I interrogate the past.”

TRACK LISTING

LP1
SIDE A
1. Latter Days (feat. Anaïs Mitchell)
2. Reese
3. Phoenix (feat. Fleet Foxes and Anaïs Mitchell)
4. Birch 

SIDE B
1. Renegade 
2. The Ghost of Cincinnati
3. Hoping Then
4. Mimi (feat. Ilsey)

LP2
SIDE A
1. Easy to Sabotage (feat. Naeem)
2. Hutch (feat. Sharon Van Etten, Lisa Hannigan and Shara Nova [My Brightest Diamond])
3. 8:22am (feat. La Force)

SIDE B
1. Magnolia
2. June’s a River (feat. Ben Howard and This Is The Kit
3. Brycie
4. New Auburn (feat. Anaïs Mitchell)

big red machine