A review of reviews of Avett Brothers’ ‘I and Love and You’

Photos by Jason Sandford

As you could have guessed, I’ve been listening to the new Avett Brothers album all week long since its release on Tuesday. I and Love and You is growing on me, after my initial reluctance to embrace the Avetts more polished sound.

Here’s a collection of some of what other people are saying about the Avett Brothers and their new record:

Paste magazine:

This new album, it’s smooth as butter. As silk. As a baby’s bottom. Whatever smooth thing you want to compare it to, it’s as smooth as that. You can thank producer Rick Rubin, and the band’s own perfectionist tenacity, and also the nearly ten years they’ve spent on the road, refining their sound and learning what they’re best at, which, clearly, involves breaking hearts and then piecing them back together. The new album is less raw, less frenetic; there are less blood-curdling yowls and audibly shredded banjo strings. It’s refined, a term hardly applicable to the band’s five previous albums.

That’s what Mr. Blasengame loves about it, that’s what I love about it, and that’s what a bunch of others at Paste HQ love about it. (The Avetts certainly didn’t need to prove anything to us, but damn, we’re glad they did.) But it’s also what a few folks here aren’t so sure of, and a few fans, too. It’s the question eternally plaguing any band taking a big, strange step forward with their art: Have they traded up, or lost out? You’ll have to wrassle with that for yourself…

The LA Times:

What’s distinctive about the Avetts — singing, multi-instrumentalist siblings Seth and Scott and artistically adopted stand-up bassist Bob Crawford, plus a step-member, cellist Joe Kwon — is a dedication to exploring a specific dynamic: the intense expression of soft emotions. This focus is refined and made beautifully accessible on the band’s Rick Rubin-shepherded major label debut, which follows a busy near-decade of independent releases and constant touring. 

“I and Love and You” is so earnest that more skeptical listeners might laugh out loud at its wider-eyed pronouncements. These are not college sophomores, and yet they make their girlfriends look at the stars, fret about whether they’re making art and intone about how tough it is to say those three words in the title track. 

What makes this cultivated innocence bearable, besides the band’s sprightly playing and ravishing sense of melody, is the diligence with which the Avett brothers, who write the material, and their bandmates explore the subject of sentimentality. Each cliché is honed and nurtured, making these songs both the expression of feelings that startle and a meditation on how and why feelings can be so disordering.

Rolling Stone’s video review here.

From the Louisville Courier-Journal:

Meanwhile, there’s Scott’s voice, one of the most emotionally naked in any genre, merging with Seth’s more guarded intimacy to sound like angels arm wrestling and tears drying on a cheek.

MetroWest Daily News:

The brothers’ high harmonies remain along with their ever earnest approach. Rubin may have shaved a little too much grit from the band’s rough edges, but he has helped them achieve a record that might crest the new wave of Americana and earn some significant attention. “Love” has several gears and could easily be divided into two playlists: party and pathos.

The Plain Dealer:

Produced by Rick Rubin, “I and Love and You” journeys deep into the heart of Americana, with back-porch ballads and latter-day hymns co-existing in sweet harmony with the pop-rock pleasure of “Kick Drum Heart.” Grade: A-

Jambase reviewed the Avett Brothers’ Tuesday release party in New York City:

On Tuesday night, when The Avett Brothers performed a largely unknown New York City release party for their latest effort, I and Love and You (released September 29 on American Recordings – stream it here), to maybe 150-200 diehard fans and friends at the tiny basement bar called Envoy Enterprises, the evening predictably began like the above scenario. Yet oddly enough, once the music began peoples’ guards dropped. What previously felt like a crowded floor verging on a traffic jam opened up into a friendly chatterbox of new pals with a purpose, i.e. getting to know each other’s connections to the band, talking about what they wanted to hear and cheering like Premier League hooligans.

Praises for the new album were sung, yet not as boomingly as by the music press. While being hailed as a ‘Best of the Year’ candidate by the rags (not ridiculous by any stretch), many folks frankly seemed to say, “It’s pretty and all but I like it when they rock out.” Well, that was just before the show. As much as this sentiment rings true for some of the newer material in the album format – where no shortage of love themes and a smattering of piano-driven ballads take the place of raging banjo strums – even the heartfelt pieces emanate bursting energy in the live setting, particularly when Scott Avett gets behind the drums. Moreover, they did rock out, particularly on the harrowing imagery-laden rager “Slight Figure Of Speech,” hollering the line, “I cut my chest wide open.”

Finally, here’s a Rolling Stone report on the Avett’s recent performance at the Austin City Limits Festival:

If Watkins was reserved and traditional, theAvett Brothers were a thrilling study in contrasts, pitting spare and simple instrumentation — acoustic guitar, banjo — against brothers Scott and Seth’s hoarse, violent hollering. Their aggression wasn’t just vocal: the band pogo’d like young punks during “Paranoia in Bb Major” while “Salina” built to a panicky conclusion. If Scott is the sturdy frontman, Seth is the jack-of-all-trades. He moved effortlessly from guitar to piano to drums, and attacked his vocals on “Distraction #74″ with an actor’s intensity, miming out the lyrics with his hands.

More from Reuters:

The Brothers’ signature banjo licks and country charm dominate the best songs on “I and Love and You,” but the album is nearly devoid of the youthful, punk-tinged attitude behind early Avett albums…

And from the Maryville Daily Times, writing before actually hearing the new album. Now that’s love:

But the Avetts were never about fame and fortune. If it found them, fine; but for the longest time, they were content to be who they were — sons of the South, mapping out the intricate highways and hidden paths and overgrown trails of the human heart. They may not have any more answers to the mysteries of love and heartbreak and loss and beauty than the rest of us, but their music makes a superb soundtrack for those of us making our way in this world.

And that, if nothing else, makes the Avetts worthy of the success they’ve been granted. They take what we all feel, individually and collectively, and they put it under a musical microscope. With a well-turned phrase or a well-timed chord of mournful beauty, they stir the intangible emotions we all experience and give them substance. We may not be able to describe, in words, how we feel when we traverse life’s storms and calm seas, but put on an Avett Brothers record, and we can point to the speakers and exclaim, “That is what I’m feeling.”

That kind of communion is a rare thing, and it’s one of the reasons I love music.