Avett Brothers come to Rupp using sibling intuition for ‘legitimate collaboration’

Does sibling intuition exist within the reaches of contemporary music?

Surely, if you looked at the golden pop harmonies of the Everly Brothers, the string music simpatico of the Louvin Brothers and Stanley Brothers or even the more agitated and unsteady rock ‘n’ roll alliances of Ann and Nancy Wilson in Heart or Ray and Dave Davies in the Kinks, one would have to say intuition comes into play.

It’s likely the same with Seth and Scott Avett, but the two weren’t leaving anything to chance when they began composing music separately for their newest album as the Avett Brothers, a record perhaps telling titled “Closer Than Together.”

For nearly two decades, the North Carolina siblings have fashioned a new generation folk-rock sound that has tipped its hat to a sprawling Americana music movement while remaining somewhat removed from it.

Post-breakthrough records like “I and Love and You” (2009), “The Carpenter” (2012) and “True Sadness” (2016) spoke the language of pop and rock but were largely executed with the same folk sensibility that distinguished the group’s earliest music.

But time and life changes have brought about a difference in how the Avetts fashion that music. Intuition may play a role, but trust supersedes it to the point that one brother tends to accept and expand on song ideas the other initiates.

“It’s an interesting thing, the creative process,” Seth Avett said, “It’s an ever-changing thing. But it’s also rarely talked about. Between Scott and I, it’s rarely even looked at. With decisions that need to made, it’s just sort of something that happens or it doesn’t. Scott is always working. I’m always working. As grown men with families, it’s not like we’re just going to find ourselves in each other’s living room working on songs, whereas we did 20 years ago. So the collaboration, the creative process and the writing process, is much more portable at this point. The demo making and sharing of ideas have to be more or less scheduled because there are so many other things in our lives, as well.”

None this might seem all that strategically important to the songwriting process if the music on “Closer Than Together” wasn’t so topically pointed. The term “political” has been thrown around a lot in initial reviews for a record whose songs reflect cultural violence (“Bang Bang”), the inspiration of the #MeToo movement (“New Woman’s World”) and the idea of national identity in face of modern nationalism (“We Americans”).

“You’ve got to understand that what we have going on is a legitimate collaboration,” Avett said. “This isn’t a facade of working together with one pulling the strings or the other being more forceful than the other. It is a full-on collaboration that has been going, in my mind, incredibly smoothly for so long – unusually smoothly, really, in terms of two people making something together. I mean, Scott and I went through a lot. Through growing and through hard work, a lot of this is now coming pretty naturally, thankfully, because we are brothers. But occasionally that will be challenged.

“Obviously, songs like ‘Bang Bang’ have more of a potential to challenge than others. I mean, if Scott writes a song about his wife or his kids, that’s easy to get by. The brilliance of the unifying love in the songs is very easy to just click. ‘This is great. I’ll sing backup on the choruses or whatever you need.’ But songs like ‘Bang Bang’ have created some conversations we’ve never had to have. And that’s good because we didn’t agree on everything. That forced us to grow to the next level by figuring out how to compromise and how, for us both, to present these songs at full power.”

As collaborative as the siblings are, the Avett Brothers hardly constitute a two-man operation. Bassist Bob Johnson has been a full touring and recording partner since 2001. Cellist Joe Kwon made the band’s core lineup a quartet in 2006. Then there is the input of Grammy winning producer Rick Rubin, who has overseen all of the Avetts’ studio recordings since 2009.

“It’s a very specific thing that Rick brings to the table. It’s a very specific thing Bob brings to the table. Both of them, in their own ways, have really helped Scott and I see clearly and kept us grounded in our endeavors. Rick, in particular, is such a calm presence. He’s a non-band member band member, basically. He’s always good at helping us remember that this is all part of an experiment and that we need to go into each experiment with an open mind.”

The Avett Brothers

When: 7:30 p.m. Nov. 2

Where: Rupp Arena, 430 W. Vine

Tickets: $49.50-$59.50

Call: 859-233-3535, 800-745-3000

Online: ticketmaster.com, theavettbrothers.com