I like things to be perfect, enough so that I honestly think it might be a character flaw; that goes for most things, including art, music, albums. Now, Emotionalism, the first Avett Brothers record I've listened to (I saw their name while trying to find out more about their former labelmates the Everybodyfields), is far from perfect - it's over-long and a bit all over the place, and the kind of record that you feel you can see the seams of (deliberately, I suspect). And yet I like it a lot, for a whole lot of reasons but mostly because it's so joyfully full of music and its possibilities, so that the sprawling feel of the record and its very imperfections work to its favour, registering more as the band's ideas and enthusiasm spilling over into any available space rather than as laziness or a lack of discipline or control.
In some ways, all of this is encapsulated in "Pretty Girl from Chile", an almost six minute long country-ish "Bohemian Rhapsody" in three divergent suites: modern banjo-led country ballad; hard-strummed Calexico-styled Mex-americana breaking in at the two and a half minute mark; (answering machine message bridge); electric guitar rock-out finale. Like a lot of other songs on the album, it works both as a genre-defying, stick-in-the-mind-y piece of songcraft, and as something that often literally makes me smile at its wryly humorous musicality and sheer song-ness. (I didn't want to compare them to anyone, but at times they make me think of a far more country Neutral Milk Hotel.)
In some ways, all of this is encapsulated in "Pretty Girl from Chile", an almost six minute long country-ish "Bohemian Rhapsody" in three divergent suites: modern banjo-led country ballad; hard-strummed Calexico-styled Mex-americana breaking in at the two and a half minute mark; (answering machine message bridge); electric guitar rock-out finale. Like a lot of other songs on the album, it works both as a genre-defying, stick-in-the-mind-y piece of songcraft, and as something that often literally makes me smile at its wryly humorous musicality and sheer song-ness. (I didn't want to compare them to anyone, but at times they make me think of a far more country Neutral Milk Hotel.)
