Big Red Machine Is Still Indie Rock’s Most Fruitful Group Project
How Long Do You Think It’s Gonna Last? is the second LP from the collective fronted by Aaron Dessner and Justin Vernon

Making music, more often than not, requires more than one set of hands. But for Aaron Dessner, in particular, collaboration isn’t just necessary for pulling notes off the page—it’s a life force.
Known as a primary songwriter in The National and, more recently, for his work with Taylor Swift on her beloved sister albums folklore and evermore (the former of which won the Grammy for Album of the Year), Dessner is consistently drawn to making music in a group setting, whether that’s experimenting in the basement alongside his twin brother and National bandmate Bryce while growing up in Ohio, or writing for the rock stalwarts on one of their eight studio albums.
Similarly, Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon can be frequently found creating alongside fellow heavyweights, be that at his Eaux Claires Music Festival in Wisconsin or appearing on a Kanye West track. So it wasn’t a complete shock when Vernon and Dessner released 2018’s Big Red Machine on the label they created with Bryce, 37d03d (which has since played host to albums like Bonny Light Horseman by the supergroup of the same name featuring Anaïs Mitchell, Fruit Bats’ Eric D. Johnson and The National collaborator Josh Kaufman). They began working on the follow-up to Big Red Machine’s debut at Dessner’s Long Pond studio in 2019, and the resulting album carries the same collaborative spirit and brings even more familiar faces along for the ride. How Long Do You Think It’s Gonna Last? is a complex celebration of collaboration, and it’s a continuation of Dessner and Vernon’s ever-growing musical community.
And it’s that fellowship of artists from every corner of the music world who make the Big Red Machine project so alluring. Mitchell is the first guest star to surface on HLDYTIGL’s poignant album opener “Latter Days,” which imagines the end of times. But the resounding single “Phoenix,” featuring Fleet Foxes’ Robin Pecknold, looks to a more hopeful future. It is the very sound of winter snow thawing. Pecknold sounds so natural alongside Vernon and Mitchell’s warm tones as they sing, “I was trying to find my way / I was thinking my mind was made / But you were making my heart change shape / It’s all that I could take.”
Another single, “Renegade,” which would have fit right in on folkore or evermore, was written by and features Swift. Vernon’s background vocals in the round recall soapy country ballads like Lee Ann Womack’s “I Hope You Dance,” and Swift’s delivery of lines like “Is it really your anxiety that stops you from giving me everything, or do you just not want to?” are representative of the power she and Dessner can harness together. Swift also pops up again alongside Vernon on the restless “Birch,” which chronicles a man’s search for peace.
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