(3511) The Avett Brothers / Heartless Bastards

From the ACL taping program on November 16, 2009:

In the wake of their newest album that redefines them as a musical force to be reckoned with, The Avett Brothers will take the Austin City Limits stage for the first time. Fans take note: this band of troubadours likes to get rowdy and their live shows have become the stuff of legends.

The Avett Brothers debuted their first album Country Was in 2002 with a sound Billboard Magazine defined as possesing the "ability to lure comfortable yet elegant fireplace medlodies from just a handful of guitars and one DNA strand." The Avett Brothers went on to record fice more albums and three EPs, including their 2007 EP, The Gleam II, "marking the band's considerable musical growth over just a few short years...The EP is eloquent but not showy, reflective but not self-absorbed, tender but not saccharine." [Pitchfork].

The tremendous work the band has put into these numerous records has left The Avett Brothers with a generously stocked tool belt of musical mastery that can only result from years of meticulous sharpening and polishing. While each album has been a snippet of greatness in its own right, all were essentially paving the way to I And Love And You. Released in September 2009, this album is "packed front to back with lyrical treats and lovely sonic touches" [Billboard]. Paste Magazine sings the album's praises, claiming "The Avett Brothers are experts in mining the heart and soul of the modern American man. Love is an obvious theme, but so is finding freedon and maturity. Their lyrics are tough yet vulnerable, insightful yet homepsun, manly yet emotional. The kind of thing that makes the girls giddy and the boys envious."

From the ACL taping program on June 3, 2009:

The Heartless Bastards brings their own version of old-school blues-rock to the Austin City Limits stage. Formed in 2003, the band’s constant Erika Wennerstrom, paves the way with piano, guitar and lead vocals that Rolling Stone once described as “channeling all the swagger and spit of a young Robert Plant.“

Known for her one-of-a-kind voice, which Paste calls “a mighty blues holler, projecting self-conflict not just to the rafters, but to the rafters in other states,” Wennerstrom said she can’t remember a day she didn’t want to sing. And with her third album The Mountain released in February, it’s not hard to see why. The album, which was written and recorded in Austin, is an “epic slab of country-grunge” (Entertainment Weekly) and “rousing rock’n’roll that’ll leave you aching for a roadhouse, sticky bar stool and a chipped glass of bourbon” (Spin). Dave Colvin and Jess Ebaugh add  to the live sound, as the new rhythm section with roots in the band. “We recorded some songs together way back when but never got to play together live, because those guys were both in other bands at the time,” Wennerstrom said. “In a way, we’re just picking up where we left off.”

With a new hit album, a new sound and new members, not to mention a great vocal base, it’s no wonder the band is getting acclamation left and right. Blender wrote, “With steel guitars, fiddles, banjos and newspaper-scrap reports of floods and desolation, The Mountain is as fierce as any past Bastards recording, just more honed and hellbound."