The Avett Brothers connect with acoustic brilliance

Concert review |

"Sit down!"

"Stand up!"

And so began the Avett Brothers' most recent visit to Seattle on an overcast Wednesday evening. The North Carolina trio/quartet closed a summer of great shows fraught with conflicting audiences at Woodland Park Zoo. A thousand or so were in attendance, a few hundred of which were up front for the music. The rest reclined on camping chairs and nibbled from picnic baskets while the band gushed their gentleman-redneck hearts from the small covered stage. The 20-somethings near the stage and the families behind them each maintained their own ideas of how to best enjoy the show. One group eventually prevailed.

The show started with Scott and Seth Avett — the namesake brothers — playing acoustic guitars and singing harmonies on "Murder in the City." "I wonder which brother is better," Scott sang, "which one our parents love the most. I sure did get in a lot of trouble. They seemed to let the other brother go." There's no better example of the Avetts' disarming brand of string-band self-reflection. This music might be emo if it wasn't bluegrass; it might be punk if it didn't have a banjo. What it is, then, is the most honest, forthright pop music being made today.

They continued with songs from their just-released EP, "The Second Gleam," interspersed with numbers from their breakout album "Emotionalism," which made waves last summer. Bob Crawford added sonic heft with upright bass and Joe Kwan bowed cello, an all-strings accompaniment equally suited for the concert hall and the front porch. Scott Avett kicked a brand-new bass drum while Seth flicked a high-hat cymbal with his bare hand. Twilight settled over the stage, the zoo's tree-laden backdrop catching the fading rays of the silver evening sun.

There was a Tom T. Hall cover called "That's How I Got to Memphis," an unusual nod to the band's influences, and a new song called "Standing With You." The Avetts are currently recording their Columbia Records debut with Rick Rubin, and that song was the only hint of the night of their new direction. It was a gorgeous, harmony laden tune that was way too short to draw any conclusions from.

The sun set behind the trees to the west, and the stage sunk into twilight. Scott Avett took up the drum kit at the back of the stage for the encore, and the band went into a raucous rendition of "Will You Return." By now the majority of the crowd was on its feet, reluctantly or not, singing along. This might be the Avetts' greatest asset: songs so immediately sing-alongable that are also so immediately relatable. Acoustic music, minus elaborate effects and eye-catching flash, is immediate, raw, unpredictable. The Avett Brothers found a common ground that was at once sophisticated and simple. The next step is the mainstream.

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