Back in 2011 The National announced Grateful Dead tribute album in the works. Two years later the announcement was updated, and now they’ve added many more details in a Stereogum feature.
The band reportedly has “somewhere in the neighborhood of 70 contributions” that could potentially make it on the album. These contributions range from The War on Drugs cover of “Touch of Grey,” the Walkmen covering “Ripple,” and Kurt Vile and J Mascis cover of “Box of Rain.” The National will be working on their cover of “Peggy-O.” The other contributions include, Perfume Genius, Fucked Up, Yo La Tengo’s Ira Kaplan, Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo, Stephen Malkmus, Daniel Rossen of Grizzly Bear, and Matthew Houck of Phosphorescent.
The band speaks of the features to Stereogum saying, “Some of the interpretations of the songs, you hear it, and you go, ‘My god, this is f**king killer.’” Bryan Devendorf (drums) said.
“It’s almost like, for some of these songs, making an album in itself,” Aaron Dessner(guitar) says of the difficulty in arranging the whole project, “But it’s fun — [the Dead] made some good studio records but it wasn’t their thing. So, to actually shine a light on these things, and to do it with a lot of care and to see how excited all these musicians are … literally, there’s everyone. I mean, you’d be shocked at all the people.”
The National has been busy headlining festivals like Treasure Island and Auckland City Limits, the band reports the compilation will be out in early 2016.
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