Here’s something I had not known I believed until Tuesday night, when I saw the Avett Brothers at College Street Music Hall: that bands are all better live than recorded.
About twenty minutes into the Avett Brothers show, I realized how silly a contrivance the legend of the live act is. I realized that I had gone into the show with the wrong expectations, the expectations I have brought to every live show I have seen since I was catching Til Tuesday opening for Hall and Oates at the Springfield Civic Center in 1985. I was expecting a band that’s put out several terrific records to be able to excite me with their live act, too. Once I accepted what a useless conceit that was, I was able to let go and enjoy a perfectly mediocre show.
At least if you come up on rock and pop, as I did, you take it for granted that the real test of an act is how they make you feel in person. Even bands known for their precision and prowess in the studio — Steely Dan comes to mind — have to earn it onstage, too (and Steely Dan does). There are exceptions, including some of the greats — the Beatles and Beach Boys were both better heard than seen — but in general you don’t even have to verbalize the point. It’s a given. The code of authenticity, the ubiquitous legend of a band coming together on the road, demands that they put on a good show.
In their fifteen years of recording and touring, the North Carolinian brothers Seth and Scott Avett have grown their group into a tight seven-piece ensemble. On some songs, they have the acoustic or electro-lite guitar sound of a jam band — but they aren’t a jam band, because they don’t jam. Scott’s banjo, teamed with Joe Kwon’s cello and Tania Elizabeth’s fiddle, offer a nod to bluegrass and mountain music — think Carolina Chocolate Drops — or the epic folk of the Lumineers. No surprise that Mumford and Sons banjo player Winston Marshall told Rolling Stone that, while recording their 2009 debut, his band listened to the Avetts’ 2006 EP Four Thieves Gone “three, four times a day.”
But the Avett Brothers’ best songs, like “Live and Die,” off 2012’s The Carpenter, are really triumphs of considered songwriting and vocal harmonies. For me, they recall the plaintive tenor singing of Michael Stipe or Death Cab for Cutie’s Ben Gibbard more than they do any of the newish Americana acts, like Bon Iver or The Tallest Man on Earth, which recently kicked off its own tour from College Street.
Here’s the problem with the live show: the Avett Brothers’ devoted fans — let’s call them the Avett bros — seem to come out for the Avetts’ worst stuff, and they are rewarded with it. They come for the old-timey stomp of the new, and barely bearable, “Ain’t No Man.” Or they want the rootsy, moonshiney Avett Brothers of media legend, the ones evoked by the ridiculous quotations coaxed out of band members by well-meaning journalists who need a narrative line. In an interview about their new album, True Sadness, Bob Crawford, The Avett Brothers’ gifted bassist, recently told the website Consequence of Sound: “I feel like ‘Ain’t No Man’ kind of, there is a higher level to it, I’m trying to avoid the word religion and spiritual but there is something about finding your place in the universe, or being able to put your finger on where you sit in this life, whatever your religion is or your worldview is.” Well, sure — and also, it’s very hand-clappy, already a chart hit, and not that good.
So at College Street Music Hall, the Avett bros, some of whom had brought their wives and tykes, clapped and stomped to “Ain’t No Man,” and they sang along faithfully to “Laundry Room,” not at all noticing that the lyric “I am a breathing time machine / and I will take you all for a ride” is uncomfortably reminiscent of Tom Cochrane’s classically bad “Life is a highway / I wanna ride it all night long.” The fans got excited when the Avett Brothers plugged in and thrashed a bit. They growled along with the faux-gospel lyrics of “Satan Pulls the Strings” (“Mama’s cooking something up, serving to us all / Satan’s ringing in now and I gotta take the call”).
There were some sweet, lovely moments around the edges — literally. If you kept your eyes downstage left, you’d catch the string section of Kwon and Elizabeth, pushing each other on, seemingly in their own, more spontaneous world. Behind them, upstage, Paul Defiglia worked his organ subtly, filling in the sound.
Mark Oppenheimer Photo
Near the end of the show, when Seth and Scott Avett crowded a sole microphone and sang “Fisher Road to Hollywood,” from True Sadness, backed only by Scott’s guitar and, over in the darkness, Kwon’s cello, I ached for more.
But then soon it was over, and the band did the fake leaving of the stage, then returned for the predictable encore, and stuff got loud, and the melodies vanished, and the absurd lyrics reasserted themselves, and I left before it was over. Next door on College Street, the Anchor bar has reopened, under its original name, Anchor Spa, without the jukebox that devotees of the old place loved so much. But it’s been lovingly restored, and the bartender suggested I try the Aviator gin, and, frankly, I’d had enough music for the night.
Westville resident Mark Oppenheimer hosts the podcast Unorthodox.
"that bands are all better live".....said every Deadhead, ever.
Marc, you are just realizing you believe this? At your age?? You need to get out more man. :-)
Come see Phish tomorrow at Hartford. Then you will see what everyone is talking about. Best live band out there, period.