The Carpenter by The Avett Brothers

A week from tomorrow The Avett Brothers next album will be released. Thanks to the good folks at NPR we are able to stream the entire album and get a preview. As the Avett's have , for the last year or so, and currently continue to do so, sit at the top of our favorite current artists this album has been much anticipated in our house.

We discovered the Avett's early in the year 2011 when the Palladia network aired the DVD of their recent concert album Live Volume III. The performance was so spellbinding that it was almost impossible to not recognize that this was a rarity, a band that wrote beautiful, insightful lyrics, and yet was as much fun to see in person as any band that you will see.

In listening to the new album, which is very good, what becomes apparent quickly is that living up to Live Volume III might well be impossible. For those fans of the Avett's who had discovered them long ago, the live album was a recording of songs they already knew, just in live format. For latecomers like myself the album was just an album that was fantastic beginning to end. It was, however, a greatest hits package.

Still the new album as I am on the third listen is certainly to be on heavy rotation on our house station this fall. Some of the initial buzz said that this album is a little more rock oriented but in listening to it I do not find that to be the case. There are a couple of songs that do so, including the album highlight " Paul Newman vs the Demons which surely does not sound like anything I have ever heard from the Avett's before.

Paul Newman vs The Demons harkens back to REM, and early nineties rock. Certainly it's background Yeah chorus sounds like a song far from 2012. Truly a fantastic song.

The first single Live and Die is easily likable and certainly could fit on any previous Avett album. Another soon to be classic song entitled " Down with the Shine" shows off the lyrical ability of the brothers as well as their harmonies. It is easy to forecast the popularity of these three songs in concert.

Where the album might suffer a bit is in the uniformity of many of the remaining songs. They are all strong, all offer their own special features but they are quite similar. Songs such as The Once and Future Carpenter, Winter in Our Heart and Through My Prayers are all beautiful songs. If an album had any one of these songs it would be blessed, the effect of having all three however shows the ever so slight danger of The Avett's losing some of the fun dance folk music and not being perhaps just a little too much singalong with lighters ( or if you prefer cell phones) in hand.

The album is an embarrassment of riches most bands would welcome. Still in order to make sure each new fan hears the Avett sound I fell in love with they do need to be careful not to become too one dimensional.