Aaron Dessner and Justin Vernon’s respective primary musical projects, though contemplative, are hardly shy. Dessner is known for his role on keys and guitar in the National, with its razor-sharp, stadium-filling sadness; Vernon is the voice and mind behind the thick, insulating layers of Bon Iver. Their joint project Big Red Machine is somewhat quieter. Now, on their second album, How Long Do You Think It’s Gonna Last?, Vernon and Dessner meander and dwell via looped electronic beats, soft piano chords and acoustic guitar, creating a world that, for all its uncertainty, manages to be calming.
The album itself is long, and each song sprawls for several minutes. Perhaps it is Vernon’s association with wilderness and isolation from Bon Iver’s first album, For Emma, Forever Ago, which he wrote in a cabin in the Wisconsin woods, or the National’s evocations of never-ending cityscapes – but there is a sense of wandering alone through vastness. There are other traces of past identities: in Vernon’s instantly recognisable falsetto, which appears in the chorus of opener “Latter Days” over melancholy piano and tender vocals by Anaïs Mitchell; and in “Reese”, where quiet brass backing recalls the trademark sound of the National. Yet in the shuffling electronic beats, such as in “Birch” and “June’s a River”, Big Red Machine divert from the clear-cut emotions they express elsewhere and inhabit a misty grey area.
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