Billboard – One of the greatest attributes of the Avett Brothers is their ability to whip up frothy, harmonic numbers out of just a few guitars and one DNA strand, but don’t come to “The Second Gleam” looking for too terribly much of that. This sequel to the 2006 EP “Gleam” is focused on characters and storytelling. It opens by addressing abandoning ties to your childhood and murder. (In “Murder in the City,” there’s some concern about which brother a father likes better, and there’s no way to not get all Freudian thinking about that.)The most hopeful thing “Second Gleam” can muster is “I’m a better man for having gone through it,” from the mournful opener “Tear Down This House” (as in, “that I grew up in”). But that said, this is a dark but potent hors d’oeuvre.
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