In 1975, music journalist and culture critic Greil Marcus published one of the great pieces of pop-music literature, Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock ‘n’ Roll. It was a wildly exciting ride through the heart and soul of American folk song that blended myth and fiction, social commentary and cultural history — and a strange and beautiful link among a few seemingly random artists including The Band, Sly Stone, Randy Newman and Elvis Presley.
To those names, I would like to add the Avett Brothers.
We put the Avetts on the cover of this issue along with a fairly bold question: “Are the Avett Brothers America’s last great rock band?” We’re not asking this glibly or casually. Neither is it a casual coincidence that we’re using the Avetts to grace our special guide to fall music festivals.
Over the past decade, the Avetts have evolved from one of America’s quintessential live rock bands to one of America’s great bands period. The Avetts today have learned to put all the frenetic energy they once displayed in smoky clubs into their albums — classic, semi-narrative folk-rock albums that tell bigger stories about what it means to be Southern, to be American, to be alive. In Mystery Train, Marcus writes that what The Band and Elvis, Sly and Randy Newman all have in common is that they “dramatize a sense of what it is to be an American; what it means, what it’s worth, what the stakes of life in America might be.”
A decade ago, the Avett Brothers were a charming if overly earnest trio of chirpy singers who performed frenzied folk-rock for bankers and frat boys. Their albums were OK, but nothing to get your knickers in a bunch over. Today, the Avetts could be the last of the purveyors of great album-oriented rock — that rare art form that saw its creative peak around the time of The Band’s first two albums in late ’60s and early ’70s — The Band and Music from Big Pink — and became a bloated joke a decade later with the preponderance of pretentious, over-the-top opuses like Pink Floyd’s The Wall.
After hip-hop had completely usurped rock’s throne by the early ’90s, popular music moved on to the art of the remix, another wildly adventurous art form, while the rock album became even more anachronistic, like traditional jazz. Rock albums are still alive, of course, still kicking, still making people happy — they’re just not as important to popular culture as they once were.
That’s what makes the Avetts so very important. When I first saw them eight years ago, they were performing at the Wachovia atrium downtown. I loved the amalgam of American folk, pop, rock and punk that they played on old-time instruments — guitar, banjo and stand-up bass — normally reserved for a straight bluegrass or country-folk outfit. And while I wasn’t so thrilled with their albums, I felt that, as Marcus also wrote of the artists in Mystery Train, the Avetts had “enough ambition to make even their failures interesting.”
Then I heard Emotionalism in 2007: It was musical, lyrical, warm, moving, sprawling. When the band’s major-label debut, I and Love and You, came two years later, I was hooked. This was album-oriented rock. The Avetts’ most recent album, The Carpenter, has only reinforced the band’s importance. The Avett Brothers are no longer just a Charlotte-area rock band whose live shows mesmerize; they now occupy the pantheon of great American rock bands.
Maybe the last one.
As the Avetts have grown, they’ve changed, and their audience will either change with them or go by the wayside — just as the audience for rock itself has. It is, as Marcus writes in Mystery Train, “the tension between community and self-reliance; between distance from one’s audience and affection for it; between the shared experience of popular culture and the special talents of the artists who both draw on that shared experience and change it — these things are what make rock ‘n’ roll at its best a democratic art, at least in the American meaning of the word democracy.”
And that’s why I would like to see the Avetts on the Mystery Train.
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This article appears in Sep 19-25, 2012.
This article is interesting but I think the author does not fully understand that a chance in music means a band changes in itself. Let me explain. The older Avetts albums were not just okay. Maybe the recording of the music was okay because they didn’t have Rick behind their albums to make sure the music itself was produced well. The songs, lyrics, and singing was all perfect in my eyes. Yes, Emotionalism and I and Love and You are both great albums where I can see how they have grown. As excited as I was about the Carpenter, I don’t think this albums comes close to their others. I think they got caught up in changing their sound so it’s not always the same. I also think they know they needed to become more main stream which I think has shown in their newer album. I am fine with the Avetts changing their sound to grow as a band. I just dont think the music is as honest as it use to be. I will always be a huge Avett Brothers fan and I will always buy their albums. I just have to say this new album isn’t what the Avett Brothers are. I was on board with I and Love and You because the quality and songs were amazing. This new album is produced well but the songs are not hard hitting like they use to be. Songs like the Carpenter and Feburary 7 are amazing.. I can even dig songs like “I never knew you” but something is missing. This change to become bigger has been a distraction. When they are constantly selling gear, and photos, and this and that.. It seems as now the Avetts are something to be bought. This isn’t how it was ever suppose to be. In fact, in one of their songs they say, “if it compromises truth then we will go” I never want to see the Avetts go, and I want them to be comfortable in making a living for their families.. I just think the music and the honesty is missing. This comment isn’t meant to trash the Avett Brothers as I am still a huge fan and respect those men.. I’m just simply commenting on what I feel and have seen over the past year or so.
Man, those early Avett albums were/are amazing. Those are the true definitions of Americana. Emotionalism and the more recent albums allowed their music to become popular American music.
I like the new album and honestly I think they just wanted to show a little bit of everything they do. It spans form the George Jones-ish “Winter in my Heart” to the solid rock song “Paul Newman vs. The demons” which they align with grunge but the song reminds me of Blue Oyster Cult. The Bluegrass seems less on this album and the classic country seems more. Trust me, classic country isnt about selling music. There are at least three songs on The Carpenter that could have been on George Straits greatest hits. You take away the orcastra fills and the crisp studio cuts and it’s still as honest as Avetts ever.
Folk rock for bankers and frat boys? That is what they do now, not what they did a decade ago. I really miss those old shows at Neighborhood Theatre with a few hundred of my closest friends.
Early Avett albums are awesome. Middle Avett albums are awesome. Recent Avett albums are awesome. Do they all sound the same? No. Then again, what I talk about, what I write about, what I think about isn’t the same as last year, 5 years, 10 years ago. Why would I expect a band to stay the same and never change? I love the fact that they are continually growing and their sound is changing and I think that my connection with their music is stronger than ever. They have had major life adjustments in recent years and their music (their life) is going to reflect that. When I see all these fans complaining that they have sold out, or that they changed to sell more records or get played more on the radio, it disappoints me. I think what you have to “get over” is the fact that things change. And I feel like you just have to learn to appreciate their music in different ways with each new song and album that is released. The music, the actual lyrics, that’s what it’s all about.
I, like everyone who has posted am a huge fan and have seen the avetts when the bar was full and the arena was full of people. But to say they are the last great rock band is not true, because I do not believe they are really rock music. They fall more in the americanna genre in my opinion. Which is a sound using classic blue grass and country foundations and attaching modern themes. Great modern rock bands are radiohead, the black keys, and well maybe that’s it. The avett brothers do “rock” but do not rely on the electric guitar to drive their sound. I do love the discussion and the debate of what “rock” music is and how it can be defined.
I LOVE The Avett Brothers, but I couldn’t finish this article… When pretentious rock critics start droning on about how rock was “bloated” & “overbearing”, and slam masterpieces like Pink Floyd’s “The Wall”, they’ve lost me, because I know they’re full of it. If they don’t understand great rock that everybody knows, what should make me think they understand great new artists that most everyday people have never heard of?
@ Christopher Dwyer – I think it’s perfectly fine to call The Avetts “rock”. Rock is a pretty wide category, and “Americana” & “folk” (and even country & bluegrass) cross over into the rock “arena”. I really like the idea of mixing The Avetts with artists like The Who, The Kinks, Tom Petty, Dire Straits, The Pretenders, Wilco, The Black Keys, The Alabama Shakes, Indigo Girls, Dawes & LOTS more, including other genres not normally associated with mainstream “rock”!
If it’s good, it’s good!
“What did you expect
And what did you forget
That to live you let go of me with each step
It becomes a progression I won’t let regret manifest
To aggression
Are you to assess what I’ve been? What I am? Or become?
Did you stop to accept how pathetically dumb
It can be to
Attack those around ’cause you’re
True to color, a town, a time, or a place?
It’s not you, it’s not mine
And besides it is gone
And you never will find it again
But I don’t want to fight
I just ask let me be
I won’t give the chance to be my enemy
So go home
Think it through”
Seems to me the Avett’s know full well what they are about and I, for one, am thoroughly enjoying the progression…and would ask, as they do in their lyric above to just “let them be”.
@Phillip: Hey, I’ll say it again: Pink Floyd, The Wall — an over-the-top opus. I’ll also say this: Pink Floyd, Piper at the Gates of Dawn — brilliant, groundbreaking, adventurous rock. And… Pink Floyd, Wish You Were Here — The band’s last solid, well-executed concept before tipping over into over-the-top opus territory.
As for my take on the Avetts’ early albums: I don’t dislike those albums overall; as I said, I think they’re OK. Plenty of those songs are excellent, and the band’s live performances of a great deal of that material during those years were just flat-out sensational. In fact, on stage is where the band excelled back then, in my opinion. I just don’t think they really mastered the art of composing for the studio until around the time of Emotionalism and the recent two major-label albums.
As for the cries “oh, they’ve changed” or “they’ve sold out,” that’s just bullshit. Children change when they grow up, too — ideally, for the better, though sometimes that’s not the case. In the Avetts’ case, I think they’ve gotten exponentially better. But you know, every act that’s ever become famous or popular on a more mainstream level has gotten that same “they’ve changed; they’ve sold-out” bullshit. The quality of an artist’s work has nothing to do with his or her mainstream acceptance — or lack thereof.
On the topic of whether or not the Avetts are rock: they’re rock to me.
And finally, I think it’s great that this piece has sparked such passionate response, whether positive or negative. I love it. It’s healthy. The kind of intelligent, passionate debate that you all have brought to this issue is music to my ears.
Every time I hear people slobbering over the Avett Bros I am convinced that they are just new to the genre. Don’t get me wrong, they are great, but they are not the first, last, or best modern americana/rock band. It is an exploding genre over the last decade, and you would all do well to look beyond the 1 that has cracked the top 40.
My eyes also roll out of my skull any time a music writer gets bored and jaded enough to write an “Are ___ the end of ___?” article.
Jaded? Moi? Au contraire! I probably listen to more music — and more kinds of music — than you know exists, even if you do use a hundred cassette tapes in your pic. OK, so maybe I’m a little arrogant, but not jaded. Definitely not jaded. 🙂
(Note: smiley-face inserted above to indicate spirit of good-natured playfulness. In other words, please don’t get all bent out of shape — I’m jesting.)
Ha, no offense taken, but the amount of music you listen to has little to do with whether you’re jaded or not!
To clarify, I can’t even really call the Avetts overrated, because I enjoy them quite a bit (maybe their writing more than their sound honestly), but the amount of attention they get is really disproportionate considering how many more exciting things are going on in that scene.
The avatar isn’t me trying to be a music snob or anything, btw, I must have just thought it looked cool at the time.
Rumbrave: The amount of attention the Avetts get is really just proportionate to their popularity, and that’s just life. It’s the way it is.
In essence, I agree with you — too many artists either don’t deserve the attention they get or don’t get the attention they deserve. I happen to believe the Avetts — and many other popular artists — do deserve the attention they get. Dave Matthews Band? Maybe not so much. But that’s just me.
But deserving of attention isn’t necessarily the same as what’s newsworthy.
I wanted to like this article… but seriously – their music PRIOR to Emotionalism was ‘ok’? That’s insulting.
As much as I adore the Avetts & always will… I gotta admit, I really do miss the pre-Emotionalism style.
The first time I listened to The Carpenter, I tried to be patient, waiting for that ol’, beloved, Avett scream. While I love the slow songs… it just doesn’t seem like an Avett albulm without some stompin’ & sceamin’. <3
It is interesting that they have changed their sound ever so slightly over the years, but to me it is far more interesting in the fact they have any consistency at all in their sound considering their roots musically. I used to play shows with those guys back when they were Margo, Nemo, and a few other obscure bands in the 1990s. There sound / sounds were anything from 90s grunge rock, to metal, and even rap core. Seriously, the sounded just like Stuck Mojo or Limp Biscuit at one point in time, if you can believe that. When they started playing acoustic initially, i just assumed it was because they wanted to get more gigs inside of coffee shops and venues that didn’t allow loud music. Who knows why they changed, but they did and they have been more consistent in the last 10 years than they were for the first 10 that’s 100% for sure.
I’ve tried to like the Avett Brothers; really, I have. They seem to be all the rage…like pop country from Nashville. Sure, some of the lyrics are good, it’s just too bad you have to wade through all of the whiny, over stressed vocals and music that sounds like someone trying to remember what a MTV reality show soundtrack would be with a banjo.