Twin Peak - Bryce Dessner

Twin Peak
BROTHERS AARON AND BRYCE DESSNER ARE RESPECTED
INSTRUMENTALISTS, COMPOSERS, AND EVENT CURATORS—
NOT TO MENTION THE TWO GUITARISTS IN ALTERNATIVE
ROCK’S GENRE-LEADING GROUP, THE NATIONAL.
BY R I C HA R D BI E N S TO CK
PHO T O G R A PH Y B Y J U S T I N B O R U CK I
34 G U ITAR AF IC IO N A D O
Aaron (left) and Bryce
in their home studio
and maybe it will vary by an eighth or a 16th note. And vice versa if
I’m playing,” he says. “That creates this interesting woven texture,
which appears in the National a lot. If you took one of our parts away, it
wouldn’t sound like the same song.”
The connection between the Dessners can hardly be understated. In
addition to being identical twins, they began playing stringed instruments on the very same day. “We were around 12 or 13, and Bryce picked
up a guitar and I picked up a bass,” he says. “I think because we were twins
and we always did everything together, there was sort of a natural competition between us. I don’t think either of us wanted the other one to get
better, so we were both really active. We’d be walking around school, doing
G R O O M I N G B R A N DY M C D O N A L D
Y
to classify the National as a “garage
band.” Not only are they massively successful but their brand
of modern rock incorporates elements of chamber pop, indie,
jazz, folk, alt-country, and avant-garde music, among other styles. And
yet, here in Brooklyn’s Ditmas Park neighborhood, in a detached structure behind guitarist Aaron Dessner’s home, stands Aaron’s Garage, the
recording studio where the National recorded much of their new and sixth
studio album, Trouble Will Find Me.
“It’s an 80-year-old, 400-square-foot, two-car garage,” Aaron says.
“We put in a live room with no parallel surfaces in order to avoid any bass
traps. And the walls are covered in cedar, so it looks a little like a sauna.
And then there’s a small control room with the Pro Tools setup, a 32-channel Toft board, and lots of vintage preamps and compressors. We did all of
[2010’s] High Violet here, and about half of the new one.”
Trouble Will Find Me is built on the same musical foundation that has
made the National—Dessner, his brother and co-guitarist Bryce, singer/
lyricist Matt Berninger, and the sibling rhythm section of bassist Scott
Devendorf and drummer Bryan Devendorf—one of rock’s most successful alternative acts. A key element in their sound is the Dessners’ intricately woven guitar lines, which are imbued with a wide array of tonal
colors and textures, as well as complex harmonies, countermelodies, and
even hocket patterns. These are set within the propulsive and decidedly
more grounded rhythmic framework provided by the Devendorf brothers,
and then topped by Berninger’s impressionistic and erudite lyrics, which
he more often than not delivers in a deep and languid baritone.
But the album, according to Bryce, is also “more ambitious and expansive” than past efforts. “We allowed ourselves to chase every rabbit down
every hole,” he says. This extended to non-guitar elements, such as the
lush orchestrations and synthy shimmer of “Demons,” and the mixedmeter tempos of tracks like “I Should Live in Salt” and “Hard to Find,”
which, Aaron says, “is the first time we’ve done something like that.” But
there are also plenty of enthralling six-string moments throughout the
record: the hazy guitar drones of “Humiliation,” the fuzzed-out sonics
that blossom at the tail end of the otherwise taut and lean “Graceless,”
and the adroit latticework of fingerpicking that anchors “Fireproof.”
Discussing the interlocking guitar patterns in this last song, Aaron
considers how his and Bryce’s sibling connection factors into how they
work together as musicians. “Sometimes we say we’re like mirrors. If
Bryce plays something, I’ll tend to come up with an inversion of sorts,
OU ’ D H A R DLY THINK
fingerings on our arms to keep our chops up.”
And yet, they traveled divergent musical paths. Aaron gravitated
toward rock, country, and jazz, playing upright bass and mandolin in addition to guitar, while Bryce was drawn to classical guitar, eventually earning
a master’s degree in the form from the Yale School of Music. “People think
we’re the same, but we actually have different focuses,” Bryce says. “Which
is partly what makes the National work. The more elaborate, composed
stuff tends to be me, and the more rock stuff tends to be Aaron.”
When it comes to guitars, the brothers do share an affinity for left-ofcenter vintage instruments. Though they employed many guitars during
the recording of Trouble Will Find Me, Aaron says he returned time and
again to a 1960 Silvertone Bobkat. He owns two of them, in fact. “They
have this thick, warm sound, and they’re also great fingerpicking guitars,”
he says. Bryce, meanwhile, stuck largely to a 1965 non-reverse Firebird,
which he purchased on eBay with a friend and then rebuilt. “The vintage
ones are expensive and hard to find,” Bryce says. “But years ago I had borrowed one from a professor at Yale, and the tone was just so deep. I wanted
one ever since. I found one on eBay for $300 that had been stripped of its
electronics and was covered in horrible fluorescent blue paint and stickers.
So we bought it and I stripped it down and found the serial number, which
indicated it was a ’65. So that was instant gratification. We refinished it,
changed out some hardware, and I put in Jason Lollar pickups—the mini
35
Firebird humbuckers and a P-90. And it’s an amazing guitar. I used to play
four or five different guitars onstage, and now I play the one.”
Other guitars that factor into the brothers’ studio and live work include
a 1963 Fender Jaguar, a mid-Seventies Telecaster, a 1970 Les Paul Deluxe,
a Fifties-era Silvertone semi-hollowbody, a 1979 Epiphone Sheraton, and a
small-bodied 1965 Guild M-20 that is their main recording acoustic.
Then there is the quartet of dulcimer-like instruments Bryce commissioned for use in a piece of music he composed for an upcoming
Carnegie Hall performance by the modern percussion ensemble So
Percussion. “They were built by a musician named Aron Sanchez, who
plays in a band called Buke and Gase,” Bryce says. “They’re based on the
hammer dulcimer, only simpler.”
Bryce’s work with So Percussion and Carnegie Hall is just one of many
musical endeavors the brothers pursue as a team and individually. Over
the years, they’ve collaborated with artists ranging from Steve Reich to
Philip Glass to David Byrne, not to mention the Copenhagen Philharmonic and the Amsterdam Sinfonietta. They’ve also produced albums for
other artists, as well as the successful 2009 AIDS charity compilation, Dark
Was the Night. More recently, the brothers curated the second installment
of their annual Crossing Brooklyn Ferry festival, a three-day event at the
Brooklyn Academy of Music that brings together musicians, artists, and
filmmakers for a series of performances, screenings, and parties.
As for how all of this dovetails with what they do in the National, Aaron
says it often doesn’t. And that’s part of the attraction. “The band is incredibly rewarding, though it’s also a very specific group dynamic,” he says. “It’s
fun to get outside of that framework.”
36 G U ITAR AFIC IO N A D O
For now, however,
the National are front
and center in the Dessners’ musical lives. The
group is holed up in a
Brooklyn rehearsal studio working through the
songs from Trouble Will
Find Me. “There’s a lot of
orchestration and different instrumentation on
the record,” Bryce says,
“and we have to figure
out how to translate all
of that through just a
few instruments.” A few
days from now, they leave for a European press junket, after which they
return home to launch an extensive world tour. “So things are pretty
crazy at the moment,” Aaron says. “But we’ve made enough records that
I should know what’s going to happen when we get to this point.” He
laughs. “And yet, every time it happens…”
Not that anyone is complaining. “It continually amazes me how much
we’ve been able to accomplish in this band,” Bryce says. “It began as something between friends, and now the music has grown into something that
is meaningful to people. For all the things I do in my life, a good National
song is probably the most exciting thing I could ever be involved in.”