05.20.06
It gets me right there, The Avett Brothers
Every so often I have a revelatory music moment. People rec a fair amount of music to me, I read reviews all over the place and despite the fact that half of what I listen to is probably crap, I am actually kind of picky. Or maybe you can just divide the music on my iPod into two categories — first: music to listen to fill the silence and second: music to break your own heart too, to run away too, to change the world for, to change yourself over. In short music either annoys me or it doesn’t or it full-on fucking pierces me.
So what’s new in the world of owning my soul, you ask? Well, I’ll tell ya, it’s the Avett Brothers. Tritely, and to sum up most the reviews I’ve read, it’s punk rock boys discovering their real musicianship in bluegrass. Except not, you know, because there isn’t anything punk to it but perhaps some of the vocals, and there isn’t anything bluegrass to it except perhaps the instruments.
The vocals are rough, sometimes bordering on the rough emo-punk grit of Jawbreaker’s Blake Schwarzbach, but the harmonies are something else entirely. There’s a ripple and twang throughout all their music that is fully more hillbilly than even bluegrass. And I mean truly hillbilly, like mountain music, back porch music, the kind of twang that twitches genetic memory in you and makes you feel like you’ve never ever lived without a heart full of longing. Like you you’ve always been chasing a high lonesome sound and hoping for happiness on the other side of it.
Try it, you’ll like it. Or you won’t. Either way, I’ll just be over here having it own me.
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