This is a time where playing it cool is the way to be. It is a time where people are taught to hold back, to keep their best tricks up their tightly-buttoned sleeves, to guard their love. The days of sonnets spoken to girls in unreachable balconies are behind us, replaced with the new coldness; maybe I'll call you, maybe I won't. In a modern setting where even the satire is satirized, love becomes weakness, tears become a punch line, real laughter a vulnerability, marriage a surrender.
The Avett Brothers introduce 'Emotionalism' today in this very time; a record that marks their position in a livid stance against such mentality. It is a first step in an effort to name and strengthen a procession already in motion; one that wants to write a sonnet, wants to truly laugh, one that says so when it hurts, one that wants to fall in love and above all, wants to admit it with the true excitement that only such a state of heart and mind can create. This spirit rises up against the coldness, against the sarcasm, against the detachment.
The American Heritage Dictionary describes emotionalism as "an inclination to rely on or place too much value on emotion/(or an) undue display of emotion". The structure of the word itself echoes the excessive nature of other terms: alcoholism, narcissism, etc. These words too, offer the image of one that has gone too far. To this end, the terms are the same. Here however, going too far is purposefully done-for a common balance, for something good. The Avett Brothers present the idea that in this era, such display of emotion is entirely due. This is said with an album of songs that mirror the thought. They truly laugh, they love, they say so when it hurts. They stand beneath the balcony and say the best poem they can think of, in hopes that whoever is up there will care to hear.
Emotionalism is a weakness. It is a presentation of a heart-lucid reality to those who do not seek it. It can be mocked. It can be ignored. This record and the group that executed it take part in a voice, singing to the guarded, the scared, the damaged, the emotionless. They will choose whether or not to listen.
track listing:
01. Die Die Die 
02. Shame
03. Paronia In B Major
04. The Weight Of Lies
05. Will You Return?
06. Ballad Of Love And Hate
07. Salina
08. Pretty Girl From Chile
09. All My Mistakes
10. Living Of Love
11. I Would Be Sad
12. Pretty Girl From San Diego
13. Go To Sleep
14. Hand-Me-Down Tune