The Avett Brothers’ The Carpenter has a sound which is more
natural and acoustic. Their music seems to be focused more on the importance of
the lyrics as opposed to the sounds of the instruments. The sounds of the
banjo, piano, and the drums are present to serve as background music to the
stories that the lyrics are telling. This is directly related to the blues in
the way that the central focus is for the artist to tell a story against a
ballad of background music. The Avett Brothers’ music is most closely related
to country and bluegrass music. This is a culturally specific genre which,
based on its history, focuses mainly to tell tales within their music. The
country and bluegrass music gets its identity from the instruments it uses which
mainly includes the banjo as the sole identifier of the genre.
The Jimi Hendrix Experience’s Are you Experienced? is drastically different from that of The
Avett Brothers’ album in various different ways. First, the lyrics have little
to do with what the song is trying to convey. It’s almost hard to make out what
some of the lyrics actually are. It’s as if they are superfluously filling any available
space between the guitar and drumming rifts. Some of the songs have more lyrics
than others but they are all basically like sprinkles on an ice cream sundae;
it’s nice to have them but are they, in reality, doing a great justice to the
main event that is being expressed? That being said, this album is on a
different end of the blues spectrum than The
Carpenter. Its focus is more on the different melodies and tunes that the
instruments can create rather than telling a clear verbal story. It mainly
wants the listener to connect with the music rather than the lyrics which is
one of the goals of blues music as a genre.
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