The National (left to right): Guitarist
Bryce Dessner, bassist Scott Devendorf,
vocalist Matt
Berninger, drummer Bryan
Devendorf, and guitarist Aaron Dessner.
Photo by Keith Klenowski
Aaron and Bryce Dessner, identical-twin instrumentalists in the
National, are not guitar heroes in the conventional sense. On
High Violet, the band’s fifth full-length album—which was on many
music reviewers’ best-of-the-year lists for 2010—you won’t find any
pyrotechnical fretwork. What you
will hear woven throughout the 11
songs’ complex instrumentation—which includes acoustic and electric
guitars, bass, drums, strings (violins, viola, and cello) and horns
(trombone, trumpet, and saxophone), accordion, piano, and ethereal
background vocals—is a subtler kind of virtuosity. The Dessners’
brand of virtuosity revolves around subversive polyrhythms, mastery
of tonal colors and texture, and their ability to make even the most
shopworn of musical structures sound compellingly new.
At the moment, the National—whose admirers include Bruce
Springsteen and R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe—is one of rock’s most
lionized bands. But when the Dessners, bassist Scott Devendorf,
drummer Bryan Devendorf (Scott’s brother), and singer Matt
Berninger formed the band in Ohio in the late ’90s and then
converged on New York, they toiled for years in semi-obscurity.
It wasn’t until the Brooklyn-based band released its third album,
2005’s
Alligator, that a buzz began to develop.
As one might imagine, the brothers Dessner have been collaborating
musically since long before the National—indeed, for most
of their lives. They grew up just outside of Cincinnati, where their
father, a jazz drummer, turned them on to his extensive collection
of records by jazz greats from all eras, as well as classic singer-songwriters
like Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan.
“I think our creativity has a lot to do with being stranded out in
the woods in this rural suburb of a provincial city, just the two of us
down in the basement for 18 years, listening to our dad’s records,”
Aaron explains. “At some point, we introduced instruments into
that equation and it was very easy for us to just ignore everything
else and play. As twins we were very productive together, because we
never had to teach each other things. Almost immediately, when we
started playing guitar, we were writing songs and bouncing things
off each other, and we rapidly became agile on the instrument.”
Aaron Dessner uses a vintage
Fender Precision bass to add
lead-bass textures
to the
National’s highly orchestrated
mix. Photo by Keith Klenowski
Blending Bluegrass, Classical, and Punk
Outside of their basement, the twins were exposed to regional
music. Being near the Ohio River, to say nothing of summer camp
in the North Carolina mountains, they absorbed plenty of country
strains that would later manifest themselves in early National
records. “We became influenced by bluegrass,” Aaron admits. “We
had a banjo around the house, and I also played a mandolin and
a tenor mandola.” Aaron also played the upright bass—and he’s
played it on every National record except
High Violet. But those
influences were counterbalanced by several others, including those
Bryce picked up while earning a master’s degree in classical guitar
performance from Yale University, and the ideas Aaron absorbed
while studying modern European history and cultural anthropology
at Columbia University.