Last month, four songs from Aaron Dessner and Justin Vernon’s Big Red Machine collaboration appeared on the new PEOPLE music collective’s website, which made a variety of the twosome’s (and their varied cohorts’) projects available for free streaming, including a cache of instrumental “sketches” from Dessner’s The National and other works featuring the likes of Will Oldham, LANZ and Lisa Hannigan (among several others).
Those tracks from Big Red Machine — which, considering Dessner is a Cincinnati native, is most likely a ’70s baseball reference and not in honor of their favorite old chewing gum dispenser or something — made their way outside of the PEOPLE universe today, popping up on Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube. The songs are also available for download through iTunes. Click here for links to see if it’s on your favorite digital service. Listen to the track “Gratitude” below.
Vernon and Dessner previously had a song titled “Big Red Machine” on 2009’s Dark Was the Night compilation album, a benefit for the AIDS/HIV charity Red Hot Organization produced and curated by Aaron Dessner and his brother Bryce. Raising more than $1.5 million for RHO, the compilation also featured Arcade Fire, Spoon, David Byrne, Grizzly Bear, My Morning Jacket and many others. The next Big Red Machine-affiliated track made public was used as the theme song for a soccer podcast.
In a recent interview, Vernon said a full 10-song BRM album would be released piece by piece throughout the summer. The BRM songs were posted today via respected Bloomington, Ind. label Jagjaguwar Records, home to Bon Iver, as well as Black Mountain, Unknown Mortal Orchestra, Angel Olsen and numerous other internationally-acclaimed Indie acts. Music website Stereogum caught an image posted with one of the YouTube tracks proclaiming an Aug. 31 release date (Stereogum removed the reference after the video was replaced with one lacking a release date hint, so it could have been a “false flag.” Or just a plain old error).
According to the PEOPLE stream, others participating on the BRM recordings include The National’s Bryan Devendorf and Bryce Dessner, former WHY? collaborator Andrew Broder, Hannigan, Phoebe Bridgers, Arcade Fire’s Richard Reed Parry and Ragnar Kjartansson, the Icelandic artist who collaborated with The National on the A Lot of Sorrow video project.
Big Red Machine performed last year at Vernon and Aaron’s Eaux Claires music festival, which is happening again this weekend in Wisconsin. It seems like there’s a good chance BRM could be playing again (performers aren’t revealed in advance of the event) — according to a PEOPLE Twitter post last night, the Dessners are on the scene.
UPDATE: Big Red Machine did indeed appear at the 2018 Eaux Claires festival (The National did too). Stereogum has the story and fan-filmed video of BRM set here.
This article appears in Jul 4-11, 2018.
