The Avett Brothers – The Avett Brothers – 180 Gram Blue Vinyl Record

Description

The Avett Brothers – The Avett Brothers – 180 Gram Blue Vinyl Record

The Avett Brothers begin their 2024 self-titled album with voices, allowing the prelude to Never Apart to establish an intimate setting before the record opens out. Scott and Seth Avett returned to producer Rick Rubin for a nine-song collection that moves between reflective writing and a much more restless rock presence. It was their first full-length studio album since Closer Than Together in 2019, with The Third Gleam appearing in between. The new record gives the brothers' close vocal relationship plenty of room, while allowing individual songs to take noticeably different routes through the band's sound.

Love of a Girl is the most immediate change of pace. Its quick delivery and scrappy rock arrangement put Scott and Seth into a vocal exchange that Seth compared, in an interview, to the way the Beastie Boys traded lines. The connection is about energy and the handoff between voices, not an attempt to turn the Avetts into a rap group. It makes a lively contrast with Never Apart, showing how much the brothers can change the feel of a song simply by changing the way they sing together and respond to one another.

Cheap Coffee takes more time and follows a less familiar path. Scott described its recording as a particularly revealing example of the band's partnership with Rubin, with the performance developing through a long session and the studio lights eventually turned off. The finished song runs over seven minutes, giving that exploratory approach a substantial place on the first side. It is a useful reminder that Rubin's role is not confined to making the group's roots influences easy to recognize. Here, the collaboration also encourages them to follow a musical idea beyond the form they initially expected.

Forever Now completes the first side, while Country Kid, Orion's Belt, and 2020 Regret bring further changes in scale and subject into the second. The record can sound conversational even when its questions become larger, partly because Scott and Seth keep the singing close to the writing. Their voices are distinct enough for a shared passage to retain two personalities, but familiar enough with one another to make the exchange feel unforced. That relationship connects the more meditative songs to the burst of energy in Love of a Girl without requiring every arrangement to resemble it.

Same Broken Bones and We Are Loved bring the nine-song program toward its close, returning the attention to connection and the things people carry together. This edition presents the album on 180 gram light-blue vinyl. The self-titled record draws on a long history with Rubin and a still longer musical relationship between the brothers, yet Cheap Coffee and Love of a Girl show that the sessions continued to offer surprises. Never Apart supplies the quieter invitation at the beginning; the contrasting songs that follow make clear how much room remains inside the band's familiar combination of voices and songwriting.

Brand new, never played and still sealed in the factory plastic

Release Details

Artist

The Avett Brothers

Album

The Avett Brothers

Format

180 Gram Blue Vinyl Record

Media configuration

1 LP

Original album release

2024

Label

Ramseur / American Recordings

Vinyl color

Light blue

Vinyl weight

180 gram

Track Listing

Side A

Never Apart (with Vocal Prelude)

Love of a Girl

Cheap Coffee

Forever Now

Side B

Country Kid

Orion's Belt

2020 Regret

Same Broken Bones

We Are Loved