The Avett Brothers Announce Release of Third Installment in Gleam Series
The Avett Brothers announced the Third Gleam, the highly-anticipated third installment in their ongoing Gleam series, will be released Aug. 28 on Loma Vista Recordings.
The album marks a return to the Avett Brothers’ roots, both sonically and in form with Seth and Scott Avett playing as a trio with longtime bassist Bob Crawford.
In a video shared with their fans, Seth and Scott Avett explain that while The Third Gleam was recorded ahead of the pandemic and social reform movements that have swept the nation, the new music captures their personal experiences and perspectives on themes that are undeniably universal and timely.
Throughout the eight-song collection, the band delves into isolation, incarceration, and injustice, as well as resilience, redemption, and love, offering a gleam of hope in a dark and uncertain time.
“The Third Gleam was finished before a virus and its carnage swept through humankind in the spring of 2020,” say Scott and Seth Avett in a statement. “It was finished before the most recent injustices against black lives inspired outrage and a much-needed call for social reform and revolution. Through the fever pitch of fear over the pandemic, outcry in the wake of widely observable bigotry, and mourning over the death caused by both, we are united in conflict…put to task in the arenas of our fortitude, our morality, indeed the strength of our own souls, individually and collectively. It is a time of heightened experience; heightened response; heightened resolve. If you are reading or hearing this statement now, you are a part of it.”
The two explain that their forthcoming album “is a whisper of an offering in a time of blaring considerations.”
“As I mentioned before, Scott and I finished this album just before these two fundamental concerns overtook nearly the entire planet,” says Seth Avett. “Consequently, as the timeline goes, the songs were not informed specifically by the urgent and pivotal concepts which are now center stage. However, as these factors have been and will remain a part of us as a whole, independent of a specific moment in history, the songs of this particular piece do connect somehow to this particular time… This is by no means a record defined by any specific social or cultural goal, nor is it informed by a singular challenge posed to humanity. It is merely the sound of my brother and I in a room, singing about what is on our minds and in our hearts at the time…sharing it now is about what sharing art is always about: another chance that we may partake in connecting with our brothers and sisters of this world, and hopefully joining you in noticing a speck of light gleaming in what appears to be a relatively long and dark night.”
The Third Gleam follows The Avett Brothers’ tenth studio album, Closer Than Together, which was released last year.
Photo: Crackerfarm
