Album Review: The Avett Brothers - The Carpenter

There needs to be some caution exercised when the word 'folk' is affixed to something musically current. The diddly-eye jigging of Mumford or Boy & Bear is not what The Avett Brothers are about, although in places on The Carpenter their touch is lighter than previously.

The Avetts are of the American tradition, the songs often carried on the intertwining harmonies of true blood siblings. The emotions – whether joyous, but more often sorrowful – are plaintively expressed. This is their second album connected to Rick Rubin as label and producer, and like his resurrection of Johnny Cash, he lets the songs and the voices centre it. Mostly, these are songs of warm darkness. It is poetry, with little to obscure the words – although the guitar, banjo, cello and upright bass line-up is occasionally augmented by little colours of quality such as The Heartbreakers' Benmont Tench adding tinkling piano or wheezing harmonium.

There is movement, from the tradesman of The Once And Future Carpenter 'losing his way' – and maybe himself – as he heads north from Texas to Detroit. He could be running from, or to, something. Perhaps a woman, as Winter In My Heart's Appalachian lament suggests, or the somewhat more torn Pretty Girl From Michigan.

The Avetts are maybe a little more settled and grown-up here, as in the self-explanatory A Father's First Spring, although the struggle of the more raucous Paul Newman Vs The Demons might still hint at past regrets, maybe with a touch of red on the neck. But it's all reflections of the closing summing-up of Life, and the living of it. The Avett Brothers again have made very pure, very human, music.