A number of days earlier than Sunday’s Golden Globes ceremony, Bryce Dessner admitted with amusing that he’d come to Los Angeles with no tuxedo — one thing of an issue, on condition that he was up for an award.
“The film folks take into consideration what the actors are going to put on, in fact, however the composer — who cares?” he mentioned final week over lunch in Beverly Hills. “I used to be like, ‘Guys, do you have got one thing I might borrow?’”
He may take into account getting a tux of his personal: Although Dessner and Nick Cave inevitably misplaced the unique track prize on the Globes to the chart-topping “Golden” from “KPop Demon Hunters,” their title theme from director Clint Bentley’s “Practice Desires” made the shortlist for an Academy Award nomination, as did Dessner’s rating for the film a few laborer in northern Idaho within the early twentieth century.
Tailored from a 2011 novella by Denis Johnson, “Practice Desires” follows Robert Grainier (performed by Joel Edgerton) by way of 80 years of life in all its turmoil and routine; we watch as he cuts down logs within the forest, as he nurtures a romantic relationship and turns into a father, as he returns dwelling in the future to a nightmarish discovery from which he by no means fairly recovers. A stirring meditation on work, love, nature and grief, the movie doesn’t include a lot dialogue — critics have in contrast it to the flicks of Terrence Malick — which implies that Dessner’s gently rippling chamber-folk music is an nearly equal accomplice to the pictures within the storytelling.
“It’s the water of the river that strikes the movie alongside,” Bentley mentioned.
The title track encompasses a haunting vocal efficiency by Cave, the veteran Australian post-punk singer and songwriter, who was so taken with Dessner’s music that in the first place he was reluctant to participate.
“The very last thing somebody who’s crafted a good looking rating desires is a few rock star to return in and sing everywhere in the prime of it,” mentioned Cave, himself an skilled movie composer. “It’s occurred to me many instances.”
Greatest often known as a member of the Grammy-winning indie-rock band the Nationwide, Dessner, 49, is certainly one of a rising variety of rock musicians discovering a spot in Hollywood. Final yr’s winner of the unique rating Oscar was “The Brutalist’s” Daniel Blumberg, who acquired his begin within the band Yuck; different composers on this yr’s shortlist embody Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood (for “One Battle After One other”), 9 Inch Nails (“Tron: Ares”) and Daniel Lopatin, who makes data underneath the identify Oneohtrix Level By no means (“Marty Supreme”).
And Dessner isn’t the one member of the Nationwide to determine a profitable profession exterior the group: His twin brother Aaron is an in-demand pop producer who’s collaborated with Taylor Swift, Ed Sheeran and Brandi Carlile, amongst different acts.
But “Practice Desires” seems like a breakthrough for Bryce Dessner — the purpose the place his backgrounds in roots music, live performance efficiency and movie scoring converge.
He got here on to the film early, having beforehand labored with Bentley on 2021’s “Jockey” and 2023’s “Sing Sing” (for which Bentley and his artistic accomplice, Greg Kwedar, earned an Oscar nod for tailored screenplay).
“They despatched me the script and I composed a good quantity of music” as Bentley was taking pictures, Dessner mentioned, “which tends to be a foul concept.” He recalled an analogous expertise a few decade in the past on Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s “The Revenant.” “I wrote like two hours of cello music after which Alejandro — he’s the nicest particular person — he was like, ‘So, I’ve to inform you — I don’t suppose we want cello.’”
Dessner, who lives in Paris along with his spouse and younger son, was wearing his standard all-black, as certainly he can be the following night time throughout a live-to-screen efficiency of “Practice Desires” on the Egyptian Theatre.
“However on this case it labored, I believe as a result of it’s a special form of movie — extra like a cinematic poem,” he mentioned of “Practice Desires.”
A few of Dessner’s cues evoke the chugging rhythms of a locomotive; others, he mentioned, have been impressed by the uncooked splendor of the Pacific Northwest — a panorama he immersed himself in by recording a lot of the rating at Flora Recording in Portland, Ore., the place the Nationwide had labored earlier than.
“It’s acquired analog gear and previous ribbon microphones and a janky upright piano,” he mentioned of the studio. “I wished some mud on the sound.”
Nick Cave on the Royal Pageant Corridor in London in October.
(Jonathan Brady / PA Photographs by way of Getty Photographs)
For the film’s title track, Bentley mentioned Cave was the one particular person he might think about hanging the precise tone: a fragile mix of weariness and gratitude.
“I truly don’t know if I might’ve moved on if he’d turned us down,” the director mentioned.
In a cellphone name, Cave, who known as himself an enormous fan of Johnson’s e-book, mentioned he watched the film “with one hand over my eyes simply because I assumed they may’ve finished a horrible job of it.” He laughed. “However inside a couple of minutes, I simply eased into it. I used to be very moved.”
He mentioned the track’s lyrics, which lay out a succession of stark photographs from Robert Grainier’s world, got here to him as he slept after seeing the movie. “It was a present from a fever dream,” he mentioned.
As a father or mother who’s misplaced two sons, did Cave establish with Edgerton’s portrayal of a father in mourning?
“Very a lot so,” he mentioned, including that he’d first learn Johnson’s e-book years in the past, earlier than his teenage son Arthur died in an unintended fall from a cliff close to the household’s dwelling in Brighton, England. “Clearly, it was a e-book about grief, but it surely didn’t have an effect on me in that method. Then I learn it once more — no, truly, I listened to Will Patton’s audiobook, which is a murals in itself — and all of the sudden it wasn’t one thing I learn from a distance.” (Bentley’s film employs Patton’s narration in voice-over.)
Requested whether or not he has a favourite line from Cave’s track, Dessner — who hears “Practice Desires” in a form of dialog with the singer’s newest album, “Wild God” — picked the track’s refrain, during which Cave sings, “I can’t start to inform you how that feels.”
“It’s like the entire movie, in a method,” the composer mentioned. “It’s about what artwork can do.”
Dessner and his brother grew up in Cincinnati, the place Bryce was enjoying flute and classical guitar by the point he was 12 or 13.
“He was additionally actually good at math,” Aaron recalled. “The mix of these issues all the time felt associated to me.”
For the Dessners, music was “simply what you probably did as suburban children at a time when there was nothing to do,” Bryce mentioned. “You both do medicine otherwise you play music.”
Bryce joined the Nationwide in New York after incomes a grasp’s diploma from the Yale College of Music. (The band’s different members are singer Matt Berninger and a second set of brothers in bassist Scott Devendorf and drummer Bryan Devendorf.)
Aaron Dessner, left, Matt Berninger and Bryce Dessner of the Nationwide carry out in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 2022.
(Roberto Ricciuti / Redferns by way of Getty Photographs)
“It was just a little little bit of an accident that we ended up in a band that acquired widespread,” Aaron mentioned, however that’s positively what occurred. By the mid-2000s, the Nationwide’s albums have been repeatedly topping critics’ lists; by 2011, the band was headlining the Hollywood Bowl.
Bryce acquired severely into movie music after Iñárritu heard a bit he composed for Gustavo Dudamel and the L.A. Phil in 2014; the director known as him the following day, Dessner recalled, and requested him to work on “The Revenant.”
Today, the members of the Nationwide are “actually having fun with a break,” Dessner mentioned, after dropping two albums in 2023 and touring behind them in 2024. He’s assured the band will come again collectively however figures it’ll be a yr or so earlier than he and his bandmates get something going once more.
Till then, he’s specializing in live performance music — “I simply acquired requested to write down a concerto for the ondes martenot,” he mentioned, referring to the early digital instrument Greenwood famously used on Radiohead’s experimental “Child A” album — and sometimes collaborating along with his brother on Aaron’s pop productions.
“Bryce is all the time going to do one thing fascinating in any setting,” mentioned Aaron, who not too long ago requested him to orchestrate a track for Florence + the Machine.
And naturally there’s the lengthy street to the Oscars with the quiet however highly effective “Practice Desires.”
“I’m form of excited to be a fly on the wall in a room with Spielberg and Scorsese and all these folks,” he mentioned forward of the Golden Globes.
As awards season kicks into gear, does Dessner harbor any hope of in some way triumphing over the world-conquering “Golden”?
“I’ve to say sure,” he replied with amusing. “However no.”
