Avi Buffalo

Sub Pop has to be one of the only remaining record labels whose history and influence still overshadows the music it hosts. It's a logo every self-respecting Music Lover should know, stamped discreetly on the backs of albums they should all own. Taking a step back, that looks like quite a cross to bear for Avi Buffalo; a group barely old enough to have even heard, let alone appreciate, the significance of music landmarks like Bleach, Every Good Bo y Deserves Fudge; even Nevermind.

Full Review | More Reviews from Publication | Top Rated of 2010

The ladies and gentlemen of Avi Buffalo are all about 19, and you might say they do a good job acting their age; they're ponderous but not brooding, strident yet skeptical, and really, really horny. As his band saunters around him, frontlad Avigdor Zahner-Isenberg finds himself "lost in your summer cum" and puzzles over mortality: "Too much time to die," he and bandmate Rebecca Coleman sing in unison, "and I don't wanna die." His voice, never too far from a crack, lends that riff on impermanence the same weight as his takes on young lust.

Full Review | More Reviews from Publication | Top Rated of 2010

At the tender age of 19, Avigdor Zahner-Isenberg might not come across as wiser than his years in his lyrics, but the music he makes definitely sounds like he skipped ahead a few grades at the School of Rock. Indeed, it’s hard to say what the most shocking quality of Zahner-Isenberg’s Long Beach-based band Avi Buffalo might be: Is it the messy hormone-fueled mini-dramas that the songs are about or, rather, the post-grad guitar-driven compositions that build on and fine tune some of indie’s most time-tested formulas? A prodigious talent with a decidedly adolescent perspective, Zahner-Isenberg might seem to have gone straight from gigs at the strip-mall café to the underground’s major leagues, but really he has honed his craft since his mid-teens by playing with all comers, be it his classmates or local bluesmen. The result is Avi Buffalo’s endearing take on (pre-)college rock, a mix of innocence and experience that delivers a first album that’s both an appealing novelty and a highly skilled endeavor that belies the band’s relative youth.

Full Review | More Reviews from Publication | Top Rated of 2010