I And Love And You

I am entranced by both the musicality and the clever and thoughtful lyrics of "I and Love and You." Consider the title song lyrics: "Three words that became hard to say: I and love and you." As a whole the album considers the nature of love, loneliness, longing and desire. The vocals and instrumentals are both energetic and polished as one would expect from a major label debut produced by Rick Rubin.

The Avett's overall style on this album is a charming blend of folk-country and rock. My favorite songs include the sweet and soulful "January Wedding" and "Ten Thousand Words" which describes the danger of paralysis by introspection. Then there is the wise and wonderful "The Perfect Space" which states "I wanna have friends that I can trust. .... that love me for the man I've become, not the man that I was." Perfect Space has an engaging shift from slow to up-tempo midway through the song. Other songs such as the joyous "Kick Drum Heart," "Slight Figure of Speech," and "It Goes On and On" exhibit this same wonderful level of foot stomping punk rock overdrive throughout.

"I and Love and You" is an album that makes me think and makes me happy at the same time. NPR has described the Avett Brothers as "Moving and smart, catchy and warm, it's a band -- and an album -- that anyone could love." I agree and suggest you get and listen to the album as soon as you can.

TheAvettBrothers Dotcom also has a stream of all the songs from I and Love and You. You call also see the NPR video and audio streams of the Avett Brothers including their performance at the 2009 Newport Folk Festival, Song of the Day and tiny desk concert. Wonderful!

I admit I'm biased and would listen to anything The Avett Brothers wanted to record, including conversations while broken down by the side of the road. That's a testament to their charisma, honesty, and straightforward talent. The new CD is packed with fantastic songs. My favorite so far is "Ill With Want" (what a title!) and if you aren't crying by the time you finish listening to those words you may not be human. Others that concert fans are already familiar with include Laundry Room (the passion will wow you, although I think it comes across better in concert), Tin Man, and the title song. Another standout among standouts is "Road Full of Promise Head Full of Doubt". I'm looking forward to a long relationship with these songs and sentiments. Oh, I almost forgot "January Wedding"! How could I forget that jewelbox?
For people new to The Avett Brothers, I urge you to also get their earlier CDs. These are the songs the rabid fans first knew them by, and they are different that the songs on I&L&Y. You need to know the other facets of the best band in the world.

With their major label debut, the Avett Bros. should hopefully be receiving even more attention than before, and well deserved it will be. The new album, I and Love and You, contains all of the good things that the Brothers represent, musically. There are satisfying harmonies, some great playing of instruments (primarily acoustic), and most of all, a very good baker's dozen of new tunes. Style-wise, the band's music is often considered New Folk, or Americana, or another roots-based category. For me, I prefer to just put them in a "favorite songs" category and leave it at that. So we do get a fair share of 6-string, banjo, piano, and even the occasional tuba, but the instrumentation is in service of the good songs. (It's not all acoustic. A few cuts such as "Kick Drum Heart" and "Slight Figure of Speech" have a more standard rock sound.) Perhaps one fear Avett fans had about the jump to a major was that they would be paired up with a producer who would water down their music, but Rick Rubin did a terrific job with I and Love and You. In this day of so many overproduced recordings, it's nice to hear a pure and clean version of the Avett Brothers that allows all of their joy in the music to come out.