For their ninth album, True Sadness, brothers Seth and Scott Avett have brought in legendary producer Rick Rubin to help shape their trademark mixture of emotional openness and cathartic release. From the very beginning, The Avett Brothers have been sharing their triumphs and tragedies in such a startlingly honest and soul baring way that listeners have found completely captivating, and that is certainly the case here. With the addition of Rubin’s focused production and nearly two decades of mutual song-writing, the brothers’ willingness to bare their most basic hopes and fears for the world to see gains a clarity and universality far beyond anything previously obtained.
The opening track is a blast of Americana that quickly shows the effects Rubin’s sure hand has on the album’s overall sound. The edges of the bass line are so sharp, the punchy hand claps that serve as percussion are so compressed and vital that the message of self belief the importance of sharing the love within us all cuts away any possibility of misunderstanding. The band has released a video to accompany the song that puts a fun spin on the lyrics. Check it out below.
Ain’t No Man
From their earliest days as a folk song writing duo to working with top notch producers and a full touring band, one thing has remained unchanged; The Avett Brothers unmatched ability to relate tales of heartbreak and despair in the most beguiling way. Songs like “Mama, I Don’t Believe” and “No Hard Feelings” bring that aspect of the band’s sound to the forefront early in the track list. When Seth sings of his weariness and compares the end of a hard day to the end of a hard life on “No Hard Feelings,” the listener not only feels his exhaustion and gratitude, they actually live it. The ability to tap into and express universal truths and feelings is a blessing and a curse for a song writer. When that sort of connection is so readily made, it carries a responsibility to address the ills that plague us and the light that unites us that can drive some to madness.
Seemingly simple tracks like “Smithsonian” are, under the surface, melancholy examinations of the realizations that the world is rarely the place we thought it was or hoped it would be in our brief time here. Rather than take a morbid tone, the song uses the knowledge of life’s fragile and transitory nature to infer the preciousness of each moment. The importance of love, and its ability to sustain and refresh us is explored in “You Are Mine” with wonderful results. “Satan Pulls The Strings” puts a poppy spin on temptation and fidelity. Whether the Devil is an invention of man to explain away our moments of weakness or a true force bent on leading us astray from the path of righteousness we all must make our decisions alone. The oft repeated refrain “The Devil’s in my head” shows a man struggling between the angels and devils on all our shoulders in a fresh, evocative way.
Satan Pulls The Strings
The title track, “True Sadness,” posits that beneath the veneer of humanity is a form of original sin, a sadness that is at our very hearts. Whether you agree with the sentiment or not, there’s no denying that emotions like sorrow and despair reside within us all. The lyrical point of the piece, however, is that this malaise can be fought back with the power of love. Songs like “I Wish I was” and “Divorce Separation Blues” evoke longing for love from a place of loneliness and the sad fate of many a modern romance. While their lyrical might is easily the most attention getting, the brothers and their accompanists, along with Rubin in the sound booth, use their instrumentation to perfect effect on each song. When Seth sings his most plaintive verses on “I Wish I Was” the starkness of the solitary banjo line implies and reinforces the separation of the song’s bleak vantage point. “Divorce Separation Blues” has an ambling, authentic old-timey nature that makes the yodeling seem less like a musical affectation and more like a lonesome cry at the state of a love grown cold.
True Sadness
Divorce Separation Blues
An almost orchestral swell opens the final track on True Sadness, “May It Last.” Lush stringwork builds in the background, adding a sense of momentum matching the sensation of time speeding up as the years flash by. It’s a song the band wouldn’t have even conceived, much less executed as perfectly before this moment in time.
True Sadness may be a bittersweet album marked with tales of loss and the existential realizations reached through the mounting wisdom of a life of struggle, but it also hides a more uplifting message. If, as the band surmises, we all carry the capacity for great despair, do we not also carry an equal measure of nearly infinite joy? Is life a series of events that affects us, or do we have the ability to make positive use of the set backs and sorrows we all face? In attempting to find beauty in loss The Avett Brothers have managed to lead by example. True Sadness is a beautiful album inspired by the ugliness that permeates the world and it’s hard to think of a better lesson to learn.