The Carpenter 2XLP

Album Details

Critically acclaimed North Carolina folk-pop-rock stalwarts The Avett Brothers are back with their seventh overall studio album, The Carpenter. Produced by Rick Rubin and recorded in North Carolina and Malibu, the 12-song set follows the group's 2009 breakthrough release and celebrated major label debut, I and Love and You. That album reached #16 on the Billboard Top 200 and received rave reviews from the likes of Rolling Stone (2009 Band to Watch), Paste (voted the #1 album of 2009 and one of the Best Albums of the Decade), Time Magazine (voted one of the Top 10 albums of 2009), New York Times, Billboard, and the Los Angeles Times among others. The Avett Brothers were even invited to perform at the 2011 Grammy Awards, and then, along with Mumford & Sons, backed up their hero Bob Dylan on a rendition of his iconic song "Maggie's Farm." Blending bluegrass, folk and punk with a rock 'n' roll swagger, the quintet, led by brothers Seth and Scott Avett, continues to pen poignant and powerful material on their newest offering. The Carpenter includes several of the group's signature harmony-driven acoustic ballads such as "The Once and Future Carpenter," but the brothers also let loose and get boisterous on cuts like "Paul Newman Versus the Demons." The album's first single, "Live and Die," is a banjo driven moving song of beauty and humility. "I and Love and You was kind of the freshman attempt at chapter two of our existence as a band," explained Scott Avett to Rolling Stone. "This record is a much purer approach to that, which will be joyful and more painful in some ways."