Closer than together

"In a mission statement for Closer Than Together, Seth Avett insists he and sibling Scott "will probably never make a sociopolitical record." "But if we did," he adds, "it might sound something like this." As men of morals and conscience, they can't refrain from refracting the world through their musical lens, so they comment, freely, about guns, poverty, prejudice, America's history of inhumanity. They moralize. They criticize. They decry and wonder why - sometimes dispensing with melody to speak outright, sometimes cramming comically insane syllable counts into single lines. And somehow, it works".

"While the band sometimes flirts with modern sounds (...) they usually default to an affectless folk-rock that shows a considerable debt to Bob Dylan. Where Dylan chose to leave questions hanging in the air, the Avett Brothers are eager to explain every situation and offer possible solutions. Such eagerness can be ingratiating, but most often, it's corny: they're so convinced in their righteousness that they never stop to consider they could be headed in the wrong direction".

Read review