Big Red Machine is a band that serves as a side project from musicians Aaron Dessner (The National) and Justin Vernon (Bon Iver).
But what started as a collaborative experiment in the debut album Big Red Machine (2018), grew into something much bigger that none of them could have anticipated. How Long Do You Think It's Gonna Last? (2021) is not only a more extensive work in terms of duration but also a much more expansive one, since it features no less than 11 artists along with the tracklist. The lineup goes from huge names like Taylor Swift, who had both Dessner and Vernon collaborating in her pair of recent albums folklore and evermore, to some artists that were new to me and equally great, like Anaïs Mitchell. The best thing about the album though is that, with so many people involved and so many ways that everything could have gone wrong, the tracklist actually feels pretty tight and cohesive, instead of sounding just like a random collection of songs.
Listen on Spotify | Apple Music | YouTube