The Avett Brothers have released “Victory”, the first track from the band’s forthcoming album, The Third Gleam. The song, as with the rest of the album, finds Seth and Scott Avett returning to their early acoustic roots.
The Third Gleam comes as the third installment in The Gleam series, which saw the first release in 2006 and the second in 2008. In the official album announcement last week, the Avetts said they will record the album as an acoustic trio, alongside bassist Bob Crawford.
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In a black and white video as somber as the song itself, we find Seth and Scott alone in an empty wooden shed. Both visually and musically, the song harkens back to the simplicity and down-home, folksy wisdom that propelled The Avett Brothers, both the boys and the band, to international stardom. But in “Victory” there is no trace of the band that launched to the top of the Billboard charts with “Ain’t No Man” in 2016.
Instead, The Avett Brothers offer a contemplation on what it means to lose and what it means to win with “Victory”. The song itself even seems to address the shallowness of trying to find salvation in success with lines like, “Accolades and happy days/They don’t ever last/Stories of courage clouded up with fear.” While hopefully not every song on The Third Gleam is filled with this kind of gloom, “Victory” is a powerful warning shot that the new album will feature the kind of contemplative songwriting that fans have been clamoring for these past few years as both the band, and its audience, have grown exponentially.
Watch the music video for “Victory” from The Avett Brothers.
The Avett Brothers — “Victory”
[Video: theavettbrothers]