The red machine feels bigger this time. When Aaron Dessner and Justin Vernon released their first album as Big Red Machine back in 2018, it marked the on-record merger of two indie-rock name brands that had long been in each other’s orbit, the singer-songwriter at the heart of Bon Iver and the guitarist-turned-producer extraordinaire from the National. With that kind of pedigree, Big Red Machine should have been a bigger deal. But for whatever reason, the album played more like a minor release in both artists’ catalogs. It could be that because it was not released under the name Bon Iver or the National, and was therefore not directly loaded into fans’ Spotify libraries or whatever, a large swath of casual fans simply didn’t hear about it. It could be that the relative straightforwardness of the exercise compared to your average National or Bon Iver album communicated low stakes. Either way, the album felt as much like a secret gift as a project from these guys could feel by the end of the 2010s.