I want the Avett Brothers to go unplugged about as much as I want Sonic Youth to do the same: not at all. The North Carolina band's appeal lies in their spirited deployment of just about every trick they know to get their songs across. Their self-produced albums range from electrified neo-string band to brooding alt-country to emphatic Beatlesque pop to hollerin' punk, all coalescing into something resolutely idiosyncratic. The downside to this approach is that the Avetts' albums can be messy affairs, although usually spectacularly so. For something as perfect as "The New Love Song" (from their third album, Mignonette) to work, it needs a counterpart like the overreaching "The Ballad of Love and Hate" (from Emotionalism), whose bluntness throws everything else into sharp relief. It's not so much that the bad makes the good sound better, but that listening to either of those albums is like watching someone walk a tightrope: They could lose their balance with any note and plummet to the ground, yet for all the wobbles, they rarely ever do.
Forsaking this anything-goes and anything-can-happen aesthetic, their 2006 acoustic EP The Gleam refined their scattershot approach by covering only one corner of the Avetts' sound, dispensing six pensively downtempo songs performed with the same arsenal of instruments-- guitars, banjo, violin, and harmonica-- but without the musically omnivorous bravado of their full-lengths. It shouldn't've worked at all, and in some cases it didn't: "Yardsale" managed to be both maudlin and overconceptual, and "Find My Love" featured some pretty ridiculous falsetto. But "When I Drink" worried over mortality like a hangnail and "Backwards With Time" made earnestness sound like righteous dissent. It's odd to have a sequel, even odder that The Second Gleam improves so thoroughly on the original, marking the band's considerable musical growth over just a few short years. These six songs align along their two favorite themes-- death and memory-- and thread together stray thoughts, good and painful memories, whimsical what-ifs into what sound like internal monologues. The new EP is eloquent but not showy, reflective but not self-absorbed, tender but not saccharine.
"Tear down the house that I grew up in/ I'll never be the same again," they sing on opener "Tear Down the House", a quietly plaintive coming-of-age song about destroying the artifacts of your past. After that, "Murder in the City" sounds like a logical conclusion as the Avetts imagine a world without them ("If I get murdered in the city/ Don't go revengin' in my name"), a bit like George Bailey with a mandolin. Throughout the EP, the Avetts' playing is subdued and occasionally too tasteful, showy only insofar as a few quiet fret taps count as grandstanding. The stripped-down music sells their ruminative approach to the subject matter on centerpiece "Bella Donna" and closer "Souls Like the Wheels", and their sincerity lets them get away with a line like "Always remember, there was nothing worth sharing like the love that let us share our name." That line, from "Murder in the City", does exactly what it's supposed to do: It reminds me to call my mom.
The Gleam EPs are interesting asides to the Avetts' discography, but because they only show one facet of this multifaceted group, they sound experimental, incomplete, secondary, even despite the new EP's sturdiness. For this reason alone it seems strange that The Second Gleam will be their final release for Ramseur Records, the North Carolina indie that shepherded them to larger venues and greater sales. The Avetts have signed with American Recordings and are currently working with Rick Rubin. Let's hope he doesn't pull a Neil Diamond on them and polish away their rough edges, which have taken them a long way so far.
