Send "Avi Buffalo " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Nme |
 Say what you like about Americans – eg having pancakes for breakfast really can’t be beneficial to a balanced diet - when it comes to indie rock there’s isn’t anyone better at it. This week’s reminder of that fact is Avi Buffalo. Four teenagers from Long Beach, California, who spearhead a new wave of bands (Dum Dum Girls, Happy Birthday) who are each propelling the iconic Seattle label Sub Pop back to its former glories. Avi Buffalo are led by a 19-year-old songwriting genius called Avigdor Zahner-Isenberg and all the songs on his band’s debut are about a young man undergoing a mental collapse. But, for all his fragility, Avi is as good a songwriter as anyone who’s ever traded under Sub Pop’s logo. And that’s quite a claim....full text |
| Guardian |
| Anyone who feels the world of music has become too jaded and cynical could do worse than peruse the Twitter feed of 19-year-old Avigdor Zahner-Isenberg, frontman of California-based quartet Avi Buffalo. It offers 140-character bursts of enthusiasm directed at virtually everything. He is enthusiastic about his band's debut album: "I'm getting stokeder and stokedissimo!" He is enthusiastic about people from websites you've never heard of Tweeting him to solicit an interview ("Thanks so much for asking!"). He is enthusiastic about his forthcoming dates in Europe ("Holy crap! PARIS!") and enthusiastic about closed-source decompression freeware: "I GOT STUFFIT EXPANDER!" This latter would count as the point where you started thinking about calling in some kind of mental health professional, were it not for the fact that, God help him, he is also enthusiastic about Fearne Cotton, whose vocal support would cause many artists to immediately hock their instruments and start inquiring about staff vacancies in the local Argos. "Fearne! You ROCKKKKK!" he Tweets, a man safely ensconced on the west coast of America, happily knowing nothing of Fearne and Holly Go Dating, blithely unaware of the second series of Love Island, thousands of miles from the epicentre of the disaster that was Fearne Meets Peaches Geldof. Buy it from Buy the CD Avi Buffalo Avi Buffalo Sub Pop 2010 It's hard not to think that at least some of Zahner-Isenberg's enthusiasms might take a bit of a battering when he actually arrives in Britain: you picture him watching Celebrity Juice with an expression suggestive of a sudden decline in stokedissimo and the words "holy crap!" once more forming on his lips. Still, his tone of disbelief is understandable. A matter of weeks ago, Zahner-Isenberg was still begging fans to let band members kip on their sofas and funding tours by selling songs via the music distribution site Bandcamp, alongside blockbusting names such as Spaghetti Anywhere, Tallulah Does the Hula, and Rockin' Johnny Austin, author of a song about England's World Cup chances, optimistically titled Victory Day 2010. Now, Avi Buffalo find themselves fast-tracked to the position of this year's Fleet Foxes, the US Indie Band Most Likely to Cross Over From the Verbose Endorsements of Pitchfork.com to Mainstream Success Up to and Including the Baleful Patronage of Fearne Cotton. It may have happened fast, but, nonetheless, it's fairly obvious why. If you were minded to play a game of American Indie Band Most Likely to Cross Over bingo while listening to their debut album, your dobber would be working overtime, so to speak. Keening post-Neil Young vocals in the manner of Mercury Rev, Flaming Lips and Band of Horses? Check. Suitably mysterious lyrics, suggestive of greater depth and "weirdness" than your average Top 40-bound rock band? Check, not least "you are tiny and your lips are like little pieces of bacon". Music that evokes a proud heritage of classic late 60s American rock? Check, albeit a heritage less wilfully beardy than that of Fleet Foxes, who sounded like the last thing that got them stokedissimo was seeing the first horseless carriage pull up outside the general store. In this case, the reedy organ, undistorted sun-dappled guitars and harmonies swirled with reverb speak of the bands that proliferated on the Sunset Strip in the mid-60s, notably Da Capo-era Love, although the disconcertingly peculiar stare of songs such as Orange Skies and ¡Que Vida! is replaced with an ironically cocked eyebrow....full text |
| Bbc |
| There are moments in everybody’s life – moments buried deep in the blissful haze of departed childhood or misspent youth – which are always conjured up upon hearing a certain song. Whether it’s one that was around at the time, or one that sums up how you felt, just hearing a few seconds are enough to transport you back to a time and place that you hadn’t thought about for a long time – slices of life long gone, dreams long discarded, love long since faded, people long since dead. Avi Buffalo is the adopted name of 19-year-old Avigdor Zahner-Isenberg, also the moniker of the band that he and three of his friends began some three years ago while in high school. Together – somehow – they’ve managed to create an album full of those moments, songs that evoke so precisely half-remembered summers and first loves that never existed, events and people in your life that never were, but which you can’t help but remember. It’s very much a summer album, not just because of the (in)gloriously titled Summer Cum (“I got lost in your summer cum / Leave all your stains with me”), but because its songs glow with the warmth of that time of year. What’s in It For? almost starts from where The Shins’ New Slang left off, its surreal lyrics and falsetto vocals capturing the sense of a never-ending August night, albeit one imbued with teenage uncertainty. Then there’s the lilting One Last, which captures the last vestiges of sunset, and the gentle erosion of innocence through experience on the lovely Can’t I Know?...full text |
Avi Buffalo lyrics
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