Early last year, 4AD released the two-disc, 31-track compilation Dark Was the Night to benefit the Red Hot Organization’s efforts to raise HIV and AIDS awareness. The compilation is more than one of the best albums released in 2009, however.
Produced and curated by the National’s Aaron and Bryce Dessner, Dark Was the Night is a summation of the rise of indie music over the past five years. The bands represented capture a moment when independent artists and labels began to push into a more mainstream cultural consciousness, serving as a capstone for a generation of musicians now leading the contemporary scene.
The Dessner brothers first conceived of and began recording artists for the project in 2005, fresh off of the release of their breakout album, Alligator. And, looking back, 2005 proved a defining year for indie music.
“I remember six months [after Alligator’s release] we were in Amsterdam with the Arcade Fire, and Funeral had just come out and we were playing the same venue as them. And Sufjan Stevens was my neighbor in New York, and that was the year of Illinois,” relates Aaron. “It was just kind of crazy how all these bands and artists and the quality of the music they were making, just how huge it was getting. So my brother and I realized that we might actually be in a situation, as we were getting to know all of these people, that we might be able to do something really meaningful by bringing everyone together. There was definitely a moment in indie rock happening then.”
The watershed of 2005 also brought national breakouts like Spoon’s Gimme Fiction, the Decemberists’ Picaresque, My Morning Jacket’s Z, the Dirty Projectors’ The Getty Address, the New Pornographers’ Twin Cinema, Bright Eyes’ I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning, and Andrew Bird and the Mysterious Production of Eggs, to name but a few of the artists who recorded tracks for the compilation over the next four years.
“It took a really long time because we had 31 tracks and about 3.5 years to put it together,” laughs Aaron. “The only criteria we had was that we were only asking people whose songwriting and songcraft we really respected, so we felt that would be the thread, the quality of the musicianship. There is nothing that it is overtly commercial or ironic or anything like that.”
The songs contributed to Dark Was the Night also rank among some of the artists’ best, from the Books’ and Jose Gonzalez’s mesmerizing interpretation of Nick Drake’s “Cello Song” to Yo La Tengo’s gorgeous “Gentle Hour” to the National’s own exceptional “So Far Around the Bend.” The Dessners also proved astute in identifying new emerging artists to participate that, by the time of the compilation’s release, had established themselves as the next voices to rise out of the indie scene.
“What’s interesting is that when we put the album together, the ‘baby’ bands at that time, the people like Bon Iver, Grizzly Bear, and Beach House, they were small bands, just starting to break,” Aaron posits. “And of course since then, there were a lot of things that were just bubbling, but between when they made the music and the record came out, they exploded.
“I do think that with our generation there is a lot of pro-social, sort of compassionate sentiment with everybody, and a lot of mutual respect and interest in collaborating and helping each other,” he continues. “At least we don’t encounter a lot of attitude, or cynical kind of people, and it’s really refreshing that most of the bands you would think of that you would want to know, they are thankful for where they are, and they do care about making the best music they can make, they do care about social causes. And people do treat it like a job, not in a dispassionate way, but treat it with respect.
“David Byrne actually made a comment when we were rehearsing for the Dark Was the Night concert that everyone shows up on time, and nobody was drunk, and that it was totally different from other generations of rock ‘n’ roll – which kind of sounds maybe a little boring, but I took that as compliment.”
The National plays the Austin City Limits Music Festival Sunday, Oct. 10.
This article appears in October 1 • 2010.
