There's disappointment and heartache aplenty on The Carpenter, the seventh album and second for a major label from North Carolina's bluegrass rock national treasure The Avett Brothers. Of course, that's life, and few American bands of the past decade articulate life as honestly and movingly as the Avetts. There's an upside to life as well, and what you ultimately come away with on The Carpenter is the will to keep going. Maybe there's no other choice? If we're put out to pasture, passed over for another on "Down With the Shrine", if on "Pretty Girl from Michigan", sparking and spirited though it may be, we're let down, and if on the pretty "Winter in My Heart" a trace of hope is hard to come by, then there's lead track "The Once and Future Carpenter" which concludes, "If I lead the life I'm given, I won't be scared to die". Sentimental to be sure, but on the rollicking "I Never Knew You" a dose of nostalgia is tempered with reality, while "Live and Die" brims with love and devotion. 

The Avetts reteamed with co-carpenter Rick Rubin to help construct this fine looking house--Rubin also worked on 2009's I and Love and You--and it would seem to be a partnership that's succeeding. 

"Real" is maybe the adjective you come across the most in ten years+ of press about The Avett Brothers, and you don't get much realer than seeing them live, which you can do in the east and south now through the end of October, when the boys' current trek winds up in New Orleans. For now, treat yourself to another fine, shining dose of recorded "real", The Carpenter from The Avett Brothers.