Michael Stipe joined Matt Berninger, Aaron Dessner and Bryce Dessner at Atabal in Biarritz on October 17. The National's own post places the four musicians together at the AB100 Mixtape event. They sang E-Bow The Letter, bringing Stipe's R.E.M. catalogue into a night organised around the Dessner brothers and their friends.
NME's report identifies the performance and links footage from the room. The National's caption names the Mixtape event and tags the musicians. For now, that post and the concert footage are the record of their appearance; there are no release details to add to a music-library entry.
AB100 celebrates Aaron and Bryce Dessner's 50th birthdays across Biarritz and San Sebastián. The birthday gathering brought the collaborators onto a shared stage. Stipe appeared alongside members of The National, with the older R.E.M. song providing a point of contact between them.
Follow the song, then the collaboration
E-Bow The Letter first appeared in 1996, on New Adventures In Hi-Fi, with Patti Smith contributing vocals to the original recording. Berninger's presence in Biarritz gives a listener a different pairing to follow. Start a comparison by following the voices. Which lines stay with Stipe, and where does the other singer enter? Only then move to the instruments. That gives the ear one change to follow at a time.
For anyone catching up through short clips, play the studio recording from beginning to end first. Then return to the live excerpt. That order makes it easier to hear where the shared vocal sections belong, without mistaking an edit in the video for a change in the song itself. We weren't in the room, so this offers a way to follow the available recording rather than a review of the concert sound.
There's a second thread worth following. Stipe and Aaron Dessner also collaborated on No Time For Love Like Now. R.E.M.HQ was already posting about that song in April 2020. NME places its later release within the Big Red Machine project, with Bryce providing orchestration. The Biarritz appearance brings those relationships back onto one stage, even though E-Bow is an older R.E.M. song.
What the post tells us
The National credits the event photographs to Graham MacIndoe. Those current images document this collaboration; the archive photograph illustrating our article comes from a separate, licensed 2008 R.E.M. performance.
Keep the October 17 date with the clip when saving or sharing it. Otherwise a 2008 cover photograph, a 1996 song and a current performance can easily get folded into one supposed new release. The four musicians did share a stage at AB100. A R.E.M. reunion or a studio release would need its own announcement.
Our album-credits guide offers another way into these connections: follow the performer, writer and arranger credits separately, then choose which recording to explore next.