The Avett Brothers Announce Self-Titled New Album

Often when an album bears the name of the artist as its title, it’s a statement that the work fully represents its creator. It tends to happen on an artist’s debut project, or sometimes an album or two in, when they feel they really have their feet under them and have made exactly the album they want to make.

After 10 studio albums, several EPs, and more than two decades as a band, The Avett Brothers have stamped their own name on their 11th album, coming May 17.

The Avett Brothers is the band’s first full-length album since 2019’s Closer Than Together (ND review) and marks a return to their original label, Ramseur Records, which is releasing the album in conjunction with American Recordings and Thirty Tigers. The album’s first single, “Love of a Girl,” is a return in some ways to their original form, too — raucous vocals, with harmonies in just the right places, over simple instrumentation. Here the guitars are electric, and the production is modern, but it’s a classic Avett Brothers theme: the agony and ecstasy of being in love.

The Avett Brothers was produced by the band’s longtime collaborator, Rick Rubin, and recorded at Rubin’s Shangri-La Studios in Malibu, with other work done in Nashville, Los Angeles, and the band’s hometown of Concord, North Carolina. Scott Avett created the illustration featured on the album’s cover. He’s long been a visual artist, and not just for the band’s output. Read our story from 2019 about an exhibition of Avett’s paintings at the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh.

The Avett Brothers released The Gleam III, a continuation of its series of EPs showcasing their roots as a trio, in 2020 (ND review). And in 2022, Seth Avett released Seth Avett Sings Greg Brown, a tribute to one of his songwriting heroes (ND story).

Last September, Scott Avett, Seth Avett, and bassist Bob Crawford were on hand to accept a Trailblazer Award for lifetime achievement at the Americana Honors & Awards Show in Nashville. A musical titled Swept Away, recently staged in Washington, DC, is based on songs and the story from The Avett Brothers’ 2004 concept album Mignonette (ND story).

The band will tour with music from The Avett Brothers album this spring and summer, starting with their Avett Brothers at the Beach festival in Riviera Maya, Mexico, in April. Find all their tour dates here.

Here’s the tracklist for The Avett Brothers:

1. Never Apart (w/ Vocal Prelude)
2. Love of a Girl
3. Cheap Coffee
4. Forever Now
5. Country Kid
6. Orion’s Belt
7. 2020 Regret
8. Same Broken Bones
9. We Are Loved