A year of Avett Bros.

The main idea of this post is that I really really like the music of the Avett Brothers. If you don’t want to read the rest, at least you have the gist of it now. If you want to continue, be my guest.

For the past year, I’ve been listening almost exclusively to the Avett Brothers. Yeah, there were times when other artists got some playing time. Mumford and Sons had their moment. So did the Decemberists with the album “The King is Dead.” And after Volapalooza there were a couple of days where all we listened to in our apartment were the mashup masterpieces of Girl Talk. But for the last twelve months I’ve always fallen back to the Avetts.

This hasn’t ever happened before. Usually I get stuck on an artist or group for a month or so, then fall back into the rest of my iTunes library before finding a new focus for another few months. A year of almost daily listening is new for me. Yet even with a constant stream of Avetts, their music hasn’t gotten old. It’s gotten better.

The first time I heard an Avett Brothers song was last June in Hagerstown, Maryland, on the way up to New York with my church for a mission trip. Dustin said there was a song I needed to hear by some group from North Carolina. I listened to “I and Love and You” for the first time and the rest of the year followed in a similar musical fashion. I bought the album on my iPhone later that trip, listened to it straight through twice on the way back, and began completing my collection of Avett Bros. albums upon my return to Nashville.

I love the music of the Avetts because each album has a different sound and feel to it, yet there are themes and styles that run common throughout. They are consistent and yet they change over time. Listening to Mignonette is a completely different experience from listening to I and Love and You. The older stuff like Country Was is much more country, more of a bluegrass feel. Emotionalism and I and Love and You are more rock/folk/whatever you want to call them. I can listen to one album over and over for a week in my car, then switch to something similar yet altogether different and it’s still the Avett Brothers.

I’d been looking for this kind of music for a while before I found it. I’ve always liked bluegrass, but I could never get into the stuff I heard, not a whole album at least. I like country, but I like other sounds too, and none of them exclusively. The Avetts mix it all together. It’s exactly what I was looking for, I just didn’t know it.

Their lyrics are simple, thoughtful, southern, deep, clever, and host of other adjectives. “The Ballad of Love and Hate” is a perfect example of brilliant lyricism and a gift for storytelling through song. Listen to it. It’s fantastic. In “Head Full of Doubt / Road Full of Promise,” one line sticks out to me every time I hear it: “If you’re loved by someone you’re never rejected, decide what to be and go be it.” That’s just good writing.

I’ll wrap this up now. Just felt like writing this was a good idea, a small way to say thanks for a year of music that I connect with, that’s always on in my car, that’s always playing in my head. If you haven’t heard the Avetts, listen to them. You may not like them, but if you do you’ll understand everything I’ve just written.

#avett brothers#music

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