Magpie And The Dandelion

This one came out of the same sessions as The Carpenter, about a year later, and it plays like exactly that. Magpie And The Dandelion is the quieter, looser sibling, the songs that didn’t make the last cut but were too good to leave in a drawer. Some of them, anyway.

Another Is Waiting is the sharp one, a banjo song taking a swing at vanity and the people who sell it. Souls Like The Wheels is the reason to own the record, an old song of theirs finally given a real recording, stark and slow and about as sad as they get. Open-Ended Life opens things on harmonica and good intentions.

It’s the slightest of their Rubin records, and a double, which doesn’t help. A lot of it drifts pleasantly by without leaving much of a mark. But when it stops drifting it’s still the Avetts, and that’s worth the two sides that sag.