Send "Zee Avi " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Popmatters |
 This is music for shiny countertops and sparkling glass; for a world where everybody spends their free time making paper boats to set sail in thimbles. So, in other words: nice. It sounds nice.Zee Avi’s debut album, secured by the quality of her YouTube videos and by Jack Johnson (I know, I know—don’t stop reading just yet) kept the sunny porch acoustics of her videos and left most of the embellishing—if you want to call it that—to her half-skip of a voice. Ghostbird, a dignified two years in the making, plays like a blueprint of how to follow up a YouTube-birthed album without embarrassing yourself. The instrumental palette has expanded, of course, but only slightly, allowing supple texturing to provide the (albeit slight) push forward. Avi’s wise enough not to take herself too seriously just yet. This isn’t to say that Ghostbird is a prescient step in a long career’ it’s still too soon to tell if Avi will have more than a niche longevity. (Though she’s certainly got the snappy name for it.) For the most part, the album takes the expected sophomore toe-dips all around, wherein the artist(e) casually tries their hand at a bunch of things which they now have the time (/income) to do: there’s the obligatory reggae beat; the hooky, percussion-loaded cut (with handclaps!) that’s sure to be featured in a car or cleaning product commercial; the sans-English song. “Bag of Gold” even provides some vague hints of well-needed dissonance in its woozy guitar slides, which peter off with twinkling piano and triangle. The album’s at its weakest when it repeats the vibes of the debut—partly because we’ve heard said vibe before, and partly because the songwriting just isn’t there sometimes. Indeed, when the songs get precious, they can be pretty deadening; if Ghostbird had sounded like “31 Days” the whole way through, it would’ve been a big fizzle and would probably cement Avi as a one-shot dose of sweetness, overwhelmed in an increasingly cynical media landscape. Luckily, it doesn’t, and despite ‘pleasant’ being the record’s ceiling, the writing rarely sounds particularly hasty....full text |
| Pastemagazine |
| After a quick, albeit passive, introduction to the first few tracks of Ghostbird, it’s hard not to lump the record’s polished collection of purposefully laid-back observations into the worn-out “let’s throw a bonfire and forget about our troubles” class of summer-exploiting ditties. And while the comfortable and simplistic style of Zee Avi’s latest LP will likely be compared by some to Jack Johnson’s overly saccharine past releases, after a few listens, the Malaysian singer-songwriter’s sophomore effort reveals an experience that, besides its scattered moments of monotony, is far too pleasant to waste the effort necessary to point out its flaws. It’s been two years since Avi’s first self-titled effort, and the 25-year-old has obviously taken some time to tweak the boundaries of her comfort zone. After large-scale performances at festivals including Bonnaroo and Outside Lands, Ghostbird takes the time to showcase her syrupy vocals, as well as her efforts to incorporate a few more subtle layers of accompaniment that provide some much-needed relief from the record’s acoustic guitars and bongos. Fueled by a summer spent listening to Merrill Garbus’ softer moments as tUnE-yArDs, my initial reaction to Avi’s vocals drew some serious comparisons to Garbus’s tamer style that lies wedged in between her powerful yelps—a huge plus for Avi. As the record progressed, and its energy went up a few notches, I found myself wondering why the artist didn’t pick up the pace from the get-go. The LP’s standout, “Concrete Wall,” surfaces in its ninth track and leads off with a wash of a cappella accompaniment before throwing in a few soft layers of electronic pulsing that are, surprisingly, the perfect complement to Avi’s song structure. Similarly, “The Book Of Morris Johnson” has an almost ’80s feel, bouncing around a catchy syth beat. But unfortunately, for every breakthrough in Ghostbird’s collection, there’s an equally predictable and safe counterpart. “Thank You Sun” regurgitates the line “Just roll your head in the sun,” one too many times and serves as an example of these unfortunate, but bearable setbacks....full text |
| Sputnikmusic |
| Zee Avi, the latest in a line of sultry folk rock heiresses, certainly knows something about the difficulties of balancing two interlocking worlds. A signed songstress to Brushfire Records and the symbol of a nation’s newfound consciousness in English indie music all at once, hers is a position worthy of both envy and embarrassing amounts of schadenfreude. The story of Zee Avi's (born Izyan Alirahman) rise to fame speaks volumes about the nature of talent sourcing in the 21st century: the half-dozen songs that she recorded and posted on YouTube at a friend’s behest ended up being discovered by the head of Monotone, who subsequently offered her a record deal. But before she even put pen to paper, the suddenness at which fame had been thrust upon her was there for all to see: those awkwardly posed video clips, a frozen moment of Southeast Asian night-time fashion shamelessly immortalized by a webcam from the bargain bin, suggested a young girl unsure of her place in the world and completely out of touch with the supple smoothness of her soon-to-be contemporaries. And yet, as hundreds upon hundreds of internet surfers flocked to the video repository like moths to a flame, the sheer force of the music sliding out from the speakers was so raw and sincere and appealing that it set Avi on a course to a future packed to the brim with music festivals and bright neon lights, almost despite herself. There may be something to be said about how being raised in a country with an artificial western feel might have prepared Avi for a life as a global citizen, but that sentiment only ends up trivializing how vital her personal mission as Malaysia’s musical ambassador to the English-speaking world really is. The initial approach to the affair was threefold: with Avi coming from a nation long starved of international musical recognition, her extraordinary self-titled debut album first became an attempt at introducing her as the pioneer of a hidden generation of talent. Then, the stripped-down harmonies on Zee Avi were heralded as timepieces from her own paper background, which included runabouts on both the rustic streets of Malaysian Borneo and around the high-rises of the nation’s capital. Elsewhere, her unfamiliar, developing world appearance became both a blessing and a curse; initially viewed as a potential barrier to universal accessibility, by the time her debut release came around it was gently being massaged and exploited – in a vague, almost Putumayo sort of way – to act as a seal of authenticity and to assure prospective buyers that this was genuine exotic burlesque entertainment. Remarkably, it all worked like a charm; Avi’s debut was a splendid success. But that was the easy part. Having proven that she could translate the simplicity of her homemade videos to the recording studio with virtually no loss of intimacy, the onus fell on Avi to record a sophomore record that was both dynamic and reminiscent of her first album; to prove that there was depth and candor behind all that smiling sunshine. And as if on cue, the introductory shimmer of “Swell Window” serves to do just that. The track opens with swelling acoustic strums and a series of stately drum beats, before Avi begins: “Like a swell window, I will wait for you/I'll ride the moment 'till I catch you again/'Till I catch you again,” she explains, her lyrics pared down to the most minimal of philosophic wanderings. Second track “Anchor” abandons its predecessor’s cascading approach in favour of an intensely personal, metaphor-filled, style of pop music that borrows heavily from Liz Janes’ lush cosmic analog sound (it even shares a title with one of her songs). “Milestone Moon” is a warm, ornate, and very human thing that could so easily have been a cut from Lisa Hannigan’s Sea Sew. Here, the music ebbs and flows as it bubbles and pops along, eventually capturing the listener in its tinkling warmth as Avi’s voice melts all over the maracas shaking softly in the background....full text |
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