The Best Thing I Heard This Week-David Wax Museum

OK, so first things first, there’s a lot of Avetts (not literally) on this album, and I feel like that can color things for a person these days. For me, if someone tells me that a record sounds like the Avett Brothers, I’m running the other way (with half-hearted apologies to Mumford & Sons). Honestly, I don’t want to hear things that sound like the Avetts, I want to hear the Avett Brothers or something completely different. That said, David Wax Museum’s Everything is Saved is a fantastic album, and I’m glad no one made an Avetts comparison before I heard it. But the influences are all over this record.

Did Rick Rubin kill the Avett Brothers?

While painting my dining room today, I decided to finally give a serious listen to the new Avett Bros album I and Love and You. I had casually listened to parts of it before, and realized it was different, but did not realize how much this album departed from their previous ventures.

This album was produced by Rick Rubin, the co-head of Columbia Records. While he is well known as the man who gave you Walk This Way, Johnny Cash's The Man Comes Around, and License to Ill, this album will not be one that stands the test of time. Rubin is well known for helping artists grow and challenge themselves. Unfortunately, in this process the Avett Brothers lost themselves.

The title track I and Love and You is by far the highlight of the album. The song is dominated by the piano and spells out the changes that are occurring as a band. The transition from NC to NY, the growth and maturation as a band as well as individuals is evident and appreciated. Unfortunately, it is all down hill from there. The first quarter of the album continues slowly, and features the other highlight of the album, Head Full of Doubt, Road Full of Promise. This is a well composed song, that fills the ears, cresting high in a sea of mediocrity. Most of the songs on the album are sparse and dominated by piano. They end up sounding too polished and lacking the noise and dirtiness that the Avett Bros have become known for. This causes most of the album to fall flat and become indistinguishable from any other top forty adult contemporary music that Casey Casem may be pushing. I feel like I might hear it on a Saturday morning right after Casey reads a touching letter where somebody dedicate's Wind beneath my wing to their mom.

Their attempts at the more traditional raucus sound that their fans have grown to love fail. The Perfect Space manages to bring a little life and hope only to have it crushed by songs such as Kick Drum Heart. Listening to this song is a struggle at best. Unfortunately it only gets worse with Tin Man, and Slight Figure of Speech. The production is too crisp and leaves the listener feeling like the band is simply going through the motions (something they could have never been accused of in previous albums).

Overall, the Avett Brothers' attempt at big label success has only crushed the spirit and the fun and sincerity that managed to eminate through their music. Like many bands before them, success may be the undoing of the Avett Brothers. I understand the need to grow as artists, but not at the expense of the essence of the band. Rick Rubin should know better. Before you know it, he will have the Avett Brothers doing a slayer cover before completely disappearing.

A Love Letter to: The Avett Brothers

I don’t claim to be the biggest Avett Brothers fan alive, I don’t own all of their albums, and I didn’t discover them before everyone else. In fact, not being completely in tune with my local music scene at the time, I had about 4 friends tell me about this band before I actually listened to them. The first two songs I heard were Swept Away and S (Untitled), which had been kindly placed on a mixed CD for me while I was living near Hazard, Kentucky in the beginning of January 2006. At the time, I was in the car a ton, both for work and then for when I wanted to drive somewhere and see civilization on the weekends. I listened to these songs over and over ago--the sweet sorrow and beginning of great love in Swept Away, and pure, earnest, and clever devotion of S. But, that was it. I had this small taste of something great, two songs; but as many loves begin, that was all I got.

Finally, a few months later, I got my next taste. I was working that summer with the Appalachia Service Project in Lake City, Tennessee with four other 20-somethings coordinating home repair. This involved massive amounts of time together in the car. Unfortunately for me, my co-worker Amanda and I had vastly different music tastes. She was far more interested in top-40 rap and the Rent soundtrack (shoot me now) than Alligator by The National, an album I had become obsessed with, and an album that fit the humid country nights of my summer. But, one day as I sifted through her ipod, seemingly in vain, an entry for The Avett Brothers caught my eye. Finally, I was reunited, and that summer we listened to Mignonette approximately 400 times as we drove around the mountains of eastern Tennessee. S became our anthem for the summer. The joy of At the Beach buoyed us during long days. Please Pardon Yourself helped us wallow in our own sorrow when needed. Signs recounted a personal moment I had in the final semester of college that I still dwelled on. It was quite serendipitous, finding this ranging and extravagant album that we could all agree on, allowing us to forgo the compromise of a mix between The National and Rent. This, coupled with a post-summer concert at The North Carolina Museum of Art outdoor pavilion was enough to send me head over heels.

After returning to civilization in the Fall of 2006, I began to devour the rest of the Avetts catalog. First, was A Carolina Jubilee. The first song was the essence of the Avett Brothers at the time. The Traveling Song doesn’t have a story, it’s more of a call to action for the Avetts and their fans. The rest of the album is similarly upbeat and hard-working—the boys always sound as if they’re trying their damnedest to please us. Sure, there are missteps here (I personally could do without Love Like the Movies and Me and God), but the album as a whole stands up on banjo and effort. You even see preludes to their most recent album in The Offering and Sorry Man. It’s less polished but just as honest.

Emotionalism, released in 2007, was a different beast altogether. I’ve heard a lot of people bemoan the change in sound of I and Love and You, but the real change happened here. I think it was just that without a big name like Rick Rubin, nobody noticed it. Shame is one of the best songs the Avett Brothers have ever recorded, a worthy homage to Brian Wilson. It starts off as a normal Avett Brothers ballad replete with banjo and all, but about 2:25 in becomes completely different as they bridge and then float into an organ induced free-fall before they pull it back into the chorus. I knew at the moment I heard this song that the Avetts were becoming a better band, and a band that I hadn’t quite expected them to be. They didn’t let off either, jumping right back into it with Paranoia in B Major, introducing the piano that would become so prevalent on their next album, and mixing it in with their usual vigor. Then, again, almost out of nowhere we get the three part suites of Salina and Pretty Girl from Chile (which would be better if they left off the answering machine bit at the end). The rest of the album is above average Avetts fare, but these songs portended the changes that were to come on I and Love and You.

I wouldn’t lie to you and tell you it sounds the same—I and Love and You is very, very different than any other Avetts album. There is a ton of piano on here, and a lot less banjo than any other recording of theirs. But they are changing. This is good. Would you really be satisfied with a retread of Four Thieves Gone or Mignonette? They are growing, and while we could postulate about their personal growth to no end, we can actually see and hear the tangible musical advancement here. And I’m not talking about learning to play the fiddle or banjo faster than before (not possible?). The song-writing here is much, much better.

The title track builds for five minutes before revealing the climax, an exercise in patience and discretion. And it Spread is a typical Avetts rocker, but is tighter than anything the put down on Four Thieves Gone. Laundry Room is my personal favorite. Normally, Scott and Seth are able to get away with things in their lyrics that I think other bands cannot. But here, they craft a song that somehow walks that fine line between trite and sadly beautiful. On top of that, we even get a brief respite into old Avetts in the closing instrumental. The album is a tightly packed 51 minutes, and there’s a lot to take in here. Their previous work was generally scattered but brilliant, here it’s shined down to an even excellence. The high points may not be as loud, but they’re still as high.

But, in the end, I suspect that the lamentations I hear are not because of any dislike of this new album, but more because we are must now share the Avett Brothers with everyone else. Some felt like they got in on the ground floor with this one, seeing the Avetts with 20 other people, sharing it by word of mouth with their closest friends. Now, they sell out shows across the country and play the late-night tv circuit. I’m happy for them. And we don’t have to “love them and set them free,” they’re still ours too. If I want “old” Avetts, I’ve still got those albums, and I’m happy they were made, just like I’m happy they’re changing and making new records. This love isn’t ending, it’s different, it’s growing.