Upon first hearing a song such as “Slight Figure of Speech,” it sounds as if The Avett Brothers have finally gotten around to making the type of music they’ve probably always wanted to make: rock ‘n’ roll.
That’s not to say the group has never rocked before — far from it. But the proliferation of hook-laden pop songs on the band’s sixth full-length album, I and Love and You, is a contrast to the band’s previous output. Much of The Avett Brothers’ catalog consists of respectful acoustic songs, rooted in a folk and bluegrass aesthetic, which is tunneled through The Avett Brothers’ rock ‘n’ roll vision.
The band’s love for rock music is no secret. The group has been sneaking rock into the mix since the beginning, and its music is often classified as a genre known as “grungegrass.” With I and Love and You, the band seems to have reached what it has been working for all these years: a perfect melding of musical tastes.
The band, made up of multi-instrumentalist brothers Scott and Seth Avett and bassist Bob Crawford, has always flexed its muscles in country and folk-leaning finger-picking style, sometimes in a more extreme fashion and sometimes in a more reserved one. But on I and Love and You, some of the band’s songs nearly veer into catchy piano-driven power-pop territory. The biggest change with I and Love and You seems to be that The Avett Brothers songs have moved away from bluegrass, their once-strongest influence.
Much of this change could possibly be attributed to Rick Rubin, the famed producer who led acts such as Slayer, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and the Beastie Boys to find critical and commercial success. Rubin signed The Avett Brothers to his American Recordings label last year and produced I and Love and You, the 9-year-old group’s major label debut.
While the album introduces some changes to the Avetts’ songs, make no mistake — it continues the band’s fine tradition of quality music.
I and Love and You opens with the appropriately modest, moving piano-based title track, on which a confident but disappointed lover travels north while telling his past of “three words that became hard to say/ I and Love and You.”
Things pick up speed not too far in, peaking with The Avett Brothers’ most uproarious song to-date: “Kick Drum Heart,” a beast of a rocker for the band. Shredding his vocals like never before, guitarist/pianist/vocalist Seth Avett sings a promotion for what appears to be the best band to woo a wife with: “My my heart like a kick drum/ my my love like a voice.”
Though the album hosts the most pop-leaning songs of The Avett Brothers’ career so far, I and Love and You is made up mostly of slower songs — a fact that may relieve longtime fans beset with the fears that accompany a small band’s leap to a major label.
And even with a slight departure from more bluegrass-tinged tendencies, I and Love and You does not change the band’s trademark characteristics in any large way. Lyrically, the group’s open-hearted stories are still found all over the album.
“You can’t be like me/ but be happy that you can’t/ I see pain but I don’t feel it/ I am like the old tin man,” opens “Tin Man” as the narrator goes on to describe his longing to feel once again. While a bit corny, songs such as “Tin Man” show off perfectly well the brothers’ fine-tuned approach to songwriting.
When it comes down to it, perhaps The Avett Brothers have always been making the music they want to make. I and Love and You is just a spirited continuation of an expression of their love for music.
rhiggins@umdbk.com
RATING: 4 out of 5 stars
