Once the princes of sweet and stabby yodeling bluegrass by way of Brooklyn-Brooklyn-take-me-in, singing and strumming bros Seth and Scott Avett long held the patent for brilliant, imaginative nü-Americana. Along with their multi-instrumentalist pal Bob Crawford and their mad string-bearer Joe Kwon, the Avetts pored their smooth, boyish voices over quirky, countrified melodies (up through 2007’s magical Emotionalism) and made you forget that Uncle Tupelo had any other nephews. Beardo production king Rick Rubin came around for their best, tightest album yet, 2009’s I And Me And You (a 10-star album if ever there was), but never left (he owns American), noodling with their sound until its honeyed bluegrass vibe took wing. Then there’s True Sadness, whose songs touch lyrically upon all things sad but with various shades of unsubtle sound to guide them.
The deeply grooving, rust-bucket funk-folk of “Ain’t No Man” yields an anthem’s melodicism and a boot-clomping rhythm, yet its catchiness could be attributed to anybody with a trucker’s cap, a bus ticket to Nashville and a dream. The same can be said for the title track. It’s when the bros go slow and hit the snooze button, however, that things heat up beyond Rubin’s hollow-room swell. “If I get too close, would the magic fade?” Seth croons like a shivering man lost in a cold sea (and yeah, I can tell the brothers apart) during the softy, warm “I Wish I Was” with just enough twang in its tonic. That same Southern sway can be heard on “Smithsonian”—felt, too. One of the things missing from Avetts’ last few Rubin-recorded albums was the fleshy, tactile sense of its early-2000s past; get the guy with the beard out of there and let him stick with Red Hot Chili Peppers albums. These guys need to reconnect with their rustic roots.
—A.D. Amorosi
