Newport update: The Avett Brothers

North Carolina homeboys The Avett Brothers took the main stage at Newport, drawing songs from all over their  catalog and opening with 2009′s “Tin Man” from the celebrated album I and Love and You.

Punctuating brother Seth’s southern serenades, Scott Avett provided balancing and blood-boiling shrieks throughout the majority of the set. “Colorshow,” from 2006′s Four Thieves Gone: The Robbinsville Sessions,  put the band on an uphill slant as the brothers climbed toward faster songs, teasing the audience by making them dance and then making them listen.

A song about getting married, as Scott introduced it, “January Wedding,” was heard by legions of near-silent listeners who stood on-edge, anticipating each line they most likely knew by heart.Falling back into ’07, the Avett Brothers sunk deep into “Shame,” a strikingly vulnerable and heartfelt tune from the appropriately titled Emotionalism.

Not to keep the audience anxious and standing still, the rollicking bluegrass of “The Fall” put the crowd to work, dancing and singing altogether, “And we all fall down.”

“This song is number one in our living room,” they introduced “My Last Song to Jenny,” a tender ballad they managed to sing intimately among the enormous mass of people.

The on-off dynamic of the Avett’s performance continued until the very end; they began what people would later say should have been their last song, “Kick Drum Heart.” Hugely fun, the audience and the Avetts played cat & mouse, going back and forth on choral hand claps. A somber finale of “I and Love and You” left some screaming for one more song, but there was no encore and suddenly the band became their ending song.

-David Padula