The Avett Brothers join acts like Gillian Welch, Old Crow Medicine Show and the Legendary Shack Shakers to bring a rock ‘n’ roll sensibility to Southern stringband music. The Avetts draw on the Piedmont blues, bluegrass and country of their native North Carolina, injecting a spirit of raucous energy and hijinks into it by way of making it their own.
Two-thirds of The Avett Brothers are indeed brothers. Scott and Seth Avett, both currently in their 20s, share lead vocals and play banjo and guitar respectively; Bob Crawford, a few years older, plays bass and adds harmony vocals. All three also contribute percussion of various kinds, mostly played with their feet, as well as whoops, hollers and other noises, vocal and otherwise.
There’s a strong old-time feeling to the album, which extends to the packaging design and the title too. According to the liner notes, it’s named after an English ship that sank off the coast of Africa in a storm in 1884, and which became a notorious example of shipwreck-survivors’ cannibalism. The survivors, including the captain, were tried for murder, which the captain freely confessed to rather than live in a silent lie.
That kind of old-time, earthy morality infuses Mignonette, as the Avetts sing songs about pretty girls, love, young family life, pretty girls, commitment, and the drudgery of living on the road as itinerant musicians. And did I mention pretty girls? The stringband gospel romp of “Nothing Short of Thankful” is a loose, shambling affair with overlapping call-and-response type vocals. “Hard Worker” is as close to straight bluegrass as the boys come, a humorous statement of blue collar life and ethics with a shifting verse structure. “At the Beach” features a whistled introduction, and this bit of good-time acoustic rock seems heavily influenced by Seventies acts like the Doobie Brothers and Mungo Jerry. “One Line Wonder” has a catchy-as-hell melody and clever wordplay in the verses, with a jaunty guitar-and-banjo line over walking bass — this one has “single” written all over it. As does the lovely, yearning love song “Swept Away,” which is offered in two versions; the album-opener is called the “sentimental version,” is slower and has an extra verse written and sung by the boys’ sister, Bonnie Avett Rini, and the up-tempo version in mid-album is also quite nice.
The rest of the songs lean toward pretty girls left behind, and the type of philosophizing common in late-night coffee houses and dorm rooms among twenty-somethings who are discovering the world, love and life for the very first time. Sometimes, as in the final track, “Salvation Song,” words are awkwardly shoehorned into the verse structure, but all is forgiven when that lovely three-part harmony kicks in.
The Avett Brothers offer an inviting brand of acoustic music that’s a tasteful blend of sincerity and insouciance, old-time and post-modern. If that sounds interesting, you can learn more at their website.
(Ramseur Records, 2004)
