The Carpenter

The Avetts made this one while Bob Crawford’s little girl was fighting a brain tumor, and you can feel it in the grain of the whole record. Mortality is all over The Carpenter, sometimes quietly, sometimes right out front. Live And Die is the bright banjo single, and even that one is about exactly what the title says.

A Father’s First Spring is the one that gets me, Scott singing to his newborn daughter with nothing fancy around it. Winter In My Heart and Through My Prayers keep the mood low. Then Paul Newman Vs. The Demons shows up like a different band walked in, and it mostly doesn’t fit.

It’s a heavier, more uneven record than the two before it, and a double on top of that. But the sad songs here are as good as any they have written, and it earns the weight it carries. Not the one I would start someone on. The one I would keep.