Aaron Dessner sat down with the Broken Record podcast for a two-part guest series, discussing everything from The National’s ninth studio album and near break-up, to writing with Taylor Swift, and more.
LISTEN NOW: Broken Record: Aaron Dessner
For those who don’t know, Aaron Dessner is a multi-talented music industry professional, co-founder of music festivals like Boston Calling, and musical curator for the charity Red Hot Organization. He is also a renowned songwriter and producer who’s worked with countless artists, including Ed Sheeran with his newly released single “Boat” and Taylor Swift’s albums folklore and evermore.
However, he is most well-known as the guitarist and founding member of the Rock band The National, who are set to release their ninth studio album, First Two Pages of Frankenstein, this week. Speaking about the release on the latest Broken Record podcast, Aaron reveals that the album was created by, "dissolving the identity of The National, or playing around with it."
“It’s a nice feeling to have made a record that I think is the best thing we’ve made, even though I know that artists always say that,” Dessner said. “But in this case, I really do feel that it somehow is a distillation of everything we’ve done. It reminds me of some of our earliest work and also some of the most developed… it matured and evolved.” That evolution seems to be the result of a make-or-break moment for the band. “This was at the end of twenty years of touring, and we were all sort of coming apart in a way, as a band and individually. We were running on fumes.”
That evolution is more than natural, as their last album was released in 2017. Yet at the same time, Dessner expanded into songwriting with Swift. He had co-written “cardigan” and other songs from folklore by 2020, and in 2022, won the GRAMMY for Album of the Year for evermore.
“The work we did with 'folklore' and 'evermore,' we benefited from [how] everything stopped,” Dessner revealed on the podcast. “We were just really making the music that felt natural in that moment, and this kind of exchange of ideas was rapid and very prolific, and very ‘her songwriting.’”
He recalled “amazing moments” during their songwriting sessions, and was full of admiration for the singer. “Taylor is amazing, we’ve become really close friends and she couldn’t be more lovely and fun. Legitimately, she’s just a really lovely, hyper-intelligent, down-to-earth person," he says.
The National’s album First Two Pages of Frankenstein will be released on April 28 followed by their North American tour kicking off in May. In the meantime, check out the Broken Record podcast and more on the free Audacy app.
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