SUNDAY, OCTOBER 18, 2026
Some birthday parties have a plus-one problem. AB100 had the opposite. On Saturday, October 17, at the Atabal in Biarritz, France, Michael Stipe joined members of The National onstage for the belated 50th-birthday celebration of twin brothers Aaron and Bryce Dessner — and the headline moment was a song Stipe's own band released thirty years ago: R.E.M.'s “E-Bow the Letter,” performed with National frontman Matt Berninger singing the part Patti Smith sang on the record. SPIN, which published photographer Graham Macindoe's pictures from the night, reported that Stipe first performed “No Time for Love Like Now,” his 2020 collaboration with Aaron Dessner, and simply never left.
The Dessners actually turned 50 on April 23, as SPIN noted — AB100 is the celebration, six months late and done properly, spread across two nights and two countries. NME reported that Saturday's opening concert was billed as “Mixtape,” with the brothers joined by a rotating cast of collaborators across the evening. SPIN's guest list from the room gives a sense of the twins' address book: Jon Hopkins, Ben Howard, Anaïs Mitchell, the Arcade Fire's Richard Reed Parry and Ragnar Kjartansson were all among the special guests. The night also came a week after The National broke a two-year stage hiatus on October 11 in Berlin as part of the PEOPLE festival, per SPIN — so Biarritz was not a band shaking off rust in private. It was a band back in public, throwing itself a party with its heroes invited.
Two songs, two collaborations
“No Time for Love Like Now” is the newer thread between these musicians, and it is a real one. NME recounted that the song was released in June 2020 under Aaron Dessner's Big Red Machine project, with orchestration by Bryce Dessner, and that Stipe and Aaron Dessner performed it together on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon later that month. At the time, Aaron described Stipe as “a great hero and friend to me (and The National),” and said he had never imagined they would end up writing songs together. Hearing it in Biarritz, in a room full of the Dessners' people, it played less like a guest spot and more like a family song.
“E-Bow the Letter” is the older, stranger thread. The song was the lead single from R.E.M.'s 1996 album New Adventures in Hi-Fi, and its original recording featured a guest vocal from Patti Smith — the part Berninger stepped into on Saturday. Before they played it, Stipe told the crowd where the song came from, in SPIN's account: “I'm very honored to be here. The song that we're going to perform started in 1975 on the Lower East Side of New York City. Exactly 20 years later, it coalesced and started to become this song in San Sebastian, which I haven't been back to since 1995.” A song born in San Sebastián, played thirty minutes from San Sebastián, on the weekend the party moves to San Sebastián. Nobody planned the geography that neatly, but Stipe clearly noticed it.
'We used to beg them to play certain songs'
Aaron Dessner set the performance up with the history underneath it. “We got to open for R.E.M. in 2007-8 and we used to beg them to play certain songs, and sometimes they would oblige,” he said, in SPIN's reporting. “We did it today again, and Michael gracefully said yes.” NME noted the same lineage from the other side: The National supported R.E.M. on their 2008 North American tour, alongside Modest Mouse — an opening band then, peers now, and on Saturday, the band whose birthday could get Michael Stipe on a plane to Biarritz.
He did not arrive empty-handed. “I brought gifts from New York City and they're heavy in my pocket,” Stipe said, per SPIN, before handing the Dessners small handmade sculptures he had made the year the bands toured together. “It's a sculpture that I made the year that we toured together. You can use it as a guitar slide, but you might get electrocuted, which is not good.” NME reported that Berninger, welcomed to the stage for “E-Bow,” answered the gift-giving in kind, jokingly handing out pieces of chewing gum. Sculptures from the guest of honor, gum from the frontman — as birthday economics go, the Dessners came out ahead.
Tonight, the full band — and the album that isn't finished
AB100 closes tonight, Sunday, October 18, across the border in San Sebastián, where NME reported “The National And Friends” will headline the Kursaal Auditorium — the band's first full-band concert since 2024 and their only full-band show of 2026, with further special guests expected. The National's most recent studio album remains 2023's Laugh Track, so tonight is less a tour stop than an event: the whole band, in one room, once this year. It has been that kind of weekend for surprise guests — Charli XCX brought out Chappell Roan across the Atlantic on Saturday — but Biarritz had the longer memory.
Stipe, meanwhile, is still finishing the record he has been promising for years. NME reported that his long-awaited debut solo album remains in progress: he shared the spoken-word track “Hum Desiderata” in July and performed the previously unheard “The Rest of Ever” on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert in April, and he has previously said he hopes to release the album before the end of 2026. Saturday suggested the delay is not for lack of voice, or company. When your 50th-birthday request gets R.E.M.'s singer to revive a song he started writing in 1975, you are not short on friends — you are short on weekends. Keep up with the rest of the weekend's stories in Previously's Music coverage.
