Hailing from North Carolina, scrappy folk-rock group The Avett Brothers have continued to strive towards a more polished, radio-friendly sound. In their latest album, “The Carpenter,” the genre-defying band has built on the foundations created with their previous album, 2009’s I and Love and You, an album often accused of being the band’s “major-label sellout move”.

While still maintaining the twangy, gritty country sound familiar to long-time fans, much of “The Carptenter” consists of light rock and roll, including their single “Live and Die”, released a few months before the album itself, and the pensive, sad ballads such as “February Seven” and “Life” that have become a staple for the Avett Brothers.

The album’s highlight is “The Once And Future Carpenter”, which, with eloquent lyrics and simple guitars, sounds less like a radio single and more like the band’s earlier work.

The album also features “Pretty Girl in Michigan”, the latest in the band’s “Pretty Girl” series, which replaces the raw bluegrass sound of the previous Pretty Girl songs with heavy electric guitar and piano harmonies.

This album marks a new chapter in the career of The Avett Brothers. Though they still employ the banjo, saw, and harmonica in their songs, they have moved away from the quasi-bluegrass sound of their early albums to something a bit more mainstream. The music they make is still very high quality, but fans of the old Avett Brothers may need to adjust.

Rating: 4 stars