Great Quotations: The Avett Brothers

Sometimes it would feel so jumbled. I might have a mound of lyrics, and I would just throw them together and try to then pull from the junkyard, as Bruce Springsteen would say. It would be a mess, and very overwhelming. We’ve kind of learned how to inventory pieces in much clearer ways. Working with Rick, we watched him inventory, and I noticed a switch where we could talk about songs in parts much quicker than we used to be able to. At the same time, there’s a limiting sort of angle to that. Someone says, “Is that the chorus, or is that the bridge?” and I’d be like, “Well, who cares?” My point is, learning to inventory and learning to write songs in a new way heightens the challenge.

– Seth Avett on writing the songs for The Carpenter (via Rolling Stone)