Approximately one year since they visited last, a bustling crowd stood anxiously Friday in the dimly lit State Theatre awaiting The Avett Brothers. The band from North Carolina came to Ithaca to shake the boundaries between bluegrass and punk in front of its growing fan base.

The boisterous young crowd welcomed the band with loud applause as Scott Avett, on drums, kicked off the show, singing, “I and Love and You,” one of the act’s distinctive, lyric-driven love songs. The brothers, Scott and Seth Avett, on banjo and guitar, were joined onstage by band member Bob Crawford playing stand-up bass and guest touring cellist, Joe Kwon. Their exclusive fusion of bluegrass  and punk rock gave the audience license to dance creatively, busting out moves that are unclassifiable.

The band played an 18-song set filled to the brim with short, snippet-length songs about love lost, found and given up. The quick tempo switches within each song kept the crowd engaged and eager for the next track.

The brothers kept the road crew busy replacing broken banjo and guitar strings as their energetic playing took the strings to the max and beyond. In addition to their energetic playing, Kwon played the cello like no one before him — picking it up and doing everything short of playing behind his back.

Seconds between songs turned into social hour for the chatty crowd, but the audience members were quickly shushed when the band went into “Four Thieves Gone,” which was sung so fast it was difficult to catch any of the words. The band plays bluegrass so hard it almost hurts, straddling the tantalizing line between pleasure and pain. But their outcome for last Friday’s show almost doubled last year’s turnout and proved that the band’s musical balance is what keeps the fans coming back for more.

Evidenced by six instrumental setups onstage, the four band members really know how to use instruments to entertain. The Avetts were constantly jumping around, switching between instruments, playing banjo one second and kick-drum the next. Band members fooled around by playing on their knees and stripping down to their undershirts.

The Avett Brothers’ vigorous playing style complimented their poetic lyrics. The lyrics, “so many nights go by with a flash like a camera without any film,” resonated through the theater, seeping into the soul of the crowd as the band performed “Standing with You.”  

Scott Avett talked about the band’s new album, “The Second Gleam,” as the cellist and the bassist stepped offstage. Alone onstage, the brothers sang their duet, “Murder in the City,” the second song off their new album. The song tunes in on their familial ties and what they described as the strongest love of all — “the love that let us share our name.”

Before the song was over, Kwon came back to join in a dramatic, dimly lit cello/guitar duet that diverted the crowd’s attention away from what was going on in the back of the stage — an electrifying switch up, literally. When the somber duet ended, the rest of the band members joined them onstage and shocked the crowd with a power-chord-driven, head-banging, punk-rock song, “Salvation Song.” The electric instruments and crazed band members raised the show’s energy to its highest level, creating a pulsating vibration that surged from the stage through the crowd and shook the walls of the theater to end the set. The Avett Brothers played up their shock factor throughout the entire show, leaving fans in a daze as they exited the theater.