A typical Avett Brothers album runs the gamut across more key moments in life than many of the group’s fans have even lived through. From love and loss to fear and abandonment, these are songs played by worn, lived-in hands, written by men who have driven the longest roads and come back home in the end. As the Avett Brothers grow in their popularity and scale, their songs become wiser and more refined, resulting in one of their greatest albums to date.

The most noticeable thing about “The Carpenter” is that, frankly, it is a pretty happy album. Gone are the laments of lonely young men stumbling through their unsteady lives; they are replaced by songs of closure, of moving on for good. Scott and Seth Avett both sound like they have finally found some kind of stability, and instead of leaving them without the inspiration that comes with strife and pain, it has left them with new perspective and sagacity.

Songs like “Live and Die,” “I Never Knew You” and “Pretty Girl from Michigan” are profound reflections on the men the Avett Brothers once were, complete with failed attempts at love, worry for the future and the restlessness that drives all small town kids to impossible journeys and life on the road. For the first time, as Scott sings in “The Once and Future Carpenter,” they realize that these things are all parts of being human. They are what it means to be alive. The first song on the album ends with a simple creed: “If I live the life I’m given, I won’t be scared to die.” It is an enlightened idea, one to live by.