The National’s Aaron and Bryce Dessner to release new album with Complete Mountain Almanac
Aaron and Bryce Dessner of The National will release a new album later this month as part of a new band called Complete Mountain Almanac. The brothers have just announced the news, adding that the four piece will be completed by their sister Jessica Dessner and the composer Rebekka Karijord.
Complete Mountain Almanac released their first track late in 2022, and they will follow up with the release of their full album on January 27th on Bella Union. Each song on the album is named after a month of the year. ‘May’ arrived in October last year, while the album announcement is being celebrated by the release of ‘February’.
Just after the band began working on the album, Jessica Dessner was diagnosed with breast cancer, which informed the writing of ‘February’. She said in a press release, “‘February’ is a song that began as a reckoning with the profound physical changes wrought by breast cancer and how they threaten to dismantle every aspect of life, and yet, somehow the spirit rises, remains constant, immutable, a force, like nature.”
Rebekka Karijord noted her thoughts on the track, saying, “To me, ‘February’ is like an ancient myth. A road trip dance, moving between vulnerability and resilience. It journeys through layers of odd meters, restlessness and mystery, and then lands in a musical landscape of acceptance and clarity.”
The press release for the self-titled album claims that it evokes the feeling of “cycl[ing] through folk, classical, chamber music and everything in between, creating a cocoon-like atmosphere that draws the listener into a stand-alone universe.”
Aaron Dessner has been busy recently; he made a surprise appearance with Taylor Swift at Bon Iver’s London show to play Swift’s track ‘Exile’, on which he and Justin Vernon had both featured. He has also worked with girl in red, Gracie Abrams and Ed Sheeran in recent times.
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