Interview: The National - Dark Was The Night
When The National’s sibling guitarists, Aaron and Bryce Dessner, decided to make a compilation album for commendable AIDS charity Red Hot, they asked their friends to get involved. It just so happens that The National’s friends include the Arcade Fire, Bon Iver, Beirut, Cat Power, Jose Gonzalez, Conor Oberst, Sufjan Stevens and the rest of indie music’s burgeoning royalty. We caught up with Aaron to find out how they managed to make Dark Was The Night and what’s next for The National.
Greg Rose: Hi Aaron, so you’ve just came from the studio? What have you been up to?
Aaron Dessner: Hi there. A couple of the artists from the album were playing songs in a loft in Brooklyn, I had too much to drink so today I’m feeling bad. We had Dirty Projectors and Yeasayer and The National and Beirut all doing some songs, some great stuff.GR: Have a lot of the artists hung out as the album has gone along?
AD: It’s weird, a lot these artists live in New York and we’ve became friends. We all have a lot in common, it makes it nice, and easy to get them to do things like this, because you can just stalk them.
GR: Is there anybody you wanted to get that you couldn’t?
AD: There’s a few that we would have loved to have: Animal Collective, LCD Soundsystem, Joanna Newsom, but we just didn’t have time. It ended up being such a long list that it feels inclusive and complete.
GR: How was the cutting process? Did you let everybody do whatever they wanted to?
AD: We described the project and asked people their opinion of what they can do. We didn’t want a theme album, there are so many compilations that feel like that. Bob Dylan is my favourite artist of all time but I don’t like listening to tributes to him, I’d rather just listen to Bob Dylan play Bob Dylan songs, unless it’s something really rare. We felt like it would be a good idea to let artists choose what they wanted to do.
GR: How strange was that approach, relinquishing the control and intricate planning that you have in The National?
AD: You can’t decline anyone’s charity. Fortunately, we really loved everything people did. A few times we had to go back and remix things, or suggest something, but generally we trusted people’s intuition.
GR: How different was it from making a National album?
AD: It’s a totally different thing. National albums are so hands-on and obsessive. There’s a lot of friction in the National’s creative process, which is what gives us that specific, subtle thing that we do, which is kind of awkward and gets us where we want to be. We could have made this more hands-on, but it would be impossible, as these artists live all over the place and everybody’s always touring.
GR: The album has themes running through it as cohesive undercurrents; it doesn’t just feel like a random collection of songs. How did you achieve that?
AD: We were shocked when we finished it to find that cohesion that is there, that shared sensibility that runs through it. It feels natural – I’m not sure how that happened, we just tried to make it flow. There’s an attention to detail and craftsmanship that is shared on a lot of the songs. It was a happy accident. It could have easily been a train wreck, it wasn’t our ingenuity that produced that.
GR: How did your track with Bon Iver come about?
AD: I’d never met him and just got in touch with him on MySpace. He wrote back and was incredibly enthusiastic. I record things all the time and sent to him a really rough thing that was a crappy old piano in my house with the microphone on the floor because it wouldn’t reach across the room. He loved it and made the song Big Red Machine out of it. It was just one of those moments when I was really happy to do what I do. I felt like music had been born again.
GR: Lots of the artists on the album haven’t had new material out in a while – did you catch people in the right creative mindset to make these songs?
AD: Everyone is in different places. It was great to be able to make songs without the context of being on an album, for the National especially. So Far Around The Bend is just, musically, shuffle, and I hate shuffle – but in this case I love the shuffle. We worked with a composer, Nico Muhly, he said we have to “get Blondie (Matt Berninger, the National’s singer) out of the mud,” so we wrote a really frolicking, orchestral arrangement that really works. This was a chance to do something you can’t do usually, something different.GR: What are The National up to at the moment?
AD: We recently built a recording studio in my garage and we are working on the next record. I’ve been writing a lot of music and Matt has probably 30 things he’s working on. It takes us a long time to finish a record. We’re on the way, it will probably be done in early 2010. We throw away a lot of things. We’re writing so quickly, it’s like when we first started the band. We record a bunch of ideas, Matt writes the lyrics in the week then we meet and find out what he’s done.
GR: How is it working with your brother? Is there lots of sibling rivalry?
AD: Sometimes, we taunt each other into doing things. I got Feist, so then it was like ‘Who are you going to get?’ and it just went back and forth like that. He got the Arcade Fire at the last minute and we were just taunting each other like that. We’re just typical brothers – people think we hate each other, but we just have a non-verbal thing, we’re often rude to each other, but that’s the way brothers are.
GR: Is it fair to say this album is a definitive representation of this period in indie music?
AD: I don’t like labeling it, because there’s so much great music about. Certainly, it’s a document of independent music at the moment, but that wasn’t our intent. It’s just people we know and have access to. For fans, this will be a great way to discover new artists and I hope people will delve further.
GR: Last summer, I spotted you at a festival reading the Sun newspaper – what did you think of it?
AD: Page three and whatever? I have been totally amused and bemused by it. Someone sent me a YouTube clip of Lily Allen and I’ve found myself listening to it on repeat, so I like that kind of thing sometimes.
GR: Do you wish Lily was on the album?
Greg Rose: Hi Aaron, so you’ve just came from the studio? What have you been up to?
Aaron Dessner: Hi there. A couple of the artists from the album were playing songs in a loft in Brooklyn, I had too much to drink so today I’m feeling bad. We had Dirty Projectors and Yeasayer and The National and Beirut all doing some songs, some great stuff.GR: Have a lot of the artists hung out as the album has gone along?
AD: It’s weird, a lot these artists live in New York and we’ve became friends. We all have a lot in common, it makes it nice, and easy to get them to do things like this, because you can just stalk them.
GR: Is there anybody you wanted to get that you couldn’t?
AD: There’s a few that we would have loved to have: Animal Collective, LCD Soundsystem, Joanna Newsom, but we just didn’t have time. It ended up being such a long list that it feels inclusive and complete.
GR: How was the cutting process? Did you let everybody do whatever they wanted to?
AD: We described the project and asked people their opinion of what they can do. We didn’t want a theme album, there are so many compilations that feel like that. Bob Dylan is my favourite artist of all time but I don’t like listening to tributes to him, I’d rather just listen to Bob Dylan play Bob Dylan songs, unless it’s something really rare. We felt like it would be a good idea to let artists choose what they wanted to do.
GR: How strange was that approach, relinquishing the control and intricate planning that you have in The National?
AD: You can’t decline anyone’s charity. Fortunately, we really loved everything people did. A few times we had to go back and remix things, or suggest something, but generally we trusted people’s intuition.
GR: How different was it from making a National album?
AD: It’s a totally different thing. National albums are so hands-on and obsessive. There’s a lot of friction in the National’s creative process, which is what gives us that specific, subtle thing that we do, which is kind of awkward and gets us where we want to be. We could have made this more hands-on, but it would be impossible, as these artists live all over the place and everybody’s always touring.
GR: The album has themes running through it as cohesive undercurrents; it doesn’t just feel like a random collection of songs. How did you achieve that?
AD: We were shocked when we finished it to find that cohesion that is there, that shared sensibility that runs through it. It feels natural – I’m not sure how that happened, we just tried to make it flow. There’s an attention to detail and craftsmanship that is shared on a lot of the songs. It was a happy accident. It could have easily been a train wreck, it wasn’t our ingenuity that produced that.
GR: How did your track with Bon Iver come about?
AD: I’d never met him and just got in touch with him on MySpace. He wrote back and was incredibly enthusiastic. I record things all the time and sent to him a really rough thing that was a crappy old piano in my house with the microphone on the floor because it wouldn’t reach across the room. He loved it and made the song Big Red Machine out of it. It was just one of those moments when I was really happy to do what I do. I felt like music had been born again.
GR: Lots of the artists on the album haven’t had new material out in a while – did you catch people in the right creative mindset to make these songs?
AD: Everyone is in different places. It was great to be able to make songs without the context of being on an album, for the National especially. So Far Around The Bend is just, musically, shuffle, and I hate shuffle – but in this case I love the shuffle. We worked with a composer, Nico Muhly, he said we have to “get Blondie (Matt Berninger, the National’s singer) out of the mud,” so we wrote a really frolicking, orchestral arrangement that really works. This was a chance to do something you can’t do usually, something different.GR: What are The National up to at the moment?
AD: We recently built a recording studio in my garage and we are working on the next record. I’ve been writing a lot of music and Matt has probably 30 things he’s working on. It takes us a long time to finish a record. We’re on the way, it will probably be done in early 2010. We throw away a lot of things. We’re writing so quickly, it’s like when we first started the band. We record a bunch of ideas, Matt writes the lyrics in the week then we meet and find out what he’s done.
GR: How is it working with your brother? Is there lots of sibling rivalry?
AD: Sometimes, we taunt each other into doing things. I got Feist, so then it was like ‘Who are you going to get?’ and it just went back and forth like that. He got the Arcade Fire at the last minute and we were just taunting each other like that. We’re just typical brothers – people think we hate each other, but we just have a non-verbal thing, we’re often rude to each other, but that’s the way brothers are.
GR: Is it fair to say this album is a definitive representation of this period in indie music?
AD: I don’t like labeling it, because there’s so much great music about. Certainly, it’s a document of independent music at the moment, but that wasn’t our intent. It’s just people we know and have access to. For fans, this will be a great way to discover new artists and I hope people will delve further.
GR: Last summer, I spotted you at a festival reading the Sun newspaper – what did you think of it?
AD: Page three and whatever? I have been totally amused and bemused by it. Someone sent me a YouTube clip of Lily Allen and I’ve found myself listening to it on repeat, so I like that kind of thing sometimes.
GR: Do you wish Lily was on the album?
AD: Erm… Haha. It would have been good for sales I guess.
GR: Have you thought of organising a show to play the album live?
AD: We’re actually doing that. We’re going to do a big show in May in New York City. I’d love to do one in London too and hope that can happen also.
GR: What are your hopes for the record in terms of what it can do for Red Hot? Do you believe music can really make a difference?
AD: This record can help raise a lot of money to fight the AIDS epidemic and that is the goal. We have such a good opportunity as musicians to help such an important cause. Red Hot has a great track record and the only goal is to raise money and awareness to fight HIV. If the album is successful critically and helps the artists, then that’s great too.
http://www.myspace.com/darkwasthenight
http://www.myspace.com/thenational
