Avi Buffalo - Avi Buffalo

We all know the drill by now: a singer-songwriter still in his teens, backed by his high school buddies, sticks one of his first songs up on MySpace; enter Sub Pop Records stage left, and before you know it the group are being hailed as the next big thing by fickle journos and websites such as the one you find yourself on right now. This ‘fairytale’ may have all the originality of a knock-knock joke, but what about the music? Hype is a strange beast, and one over which a band often has little or no control, but if the tunes stand up on their own merit then what about it. The aforementioned track that got Avi Buffalo noticed is also easily the stand-out on their debut LP: ‘What’s In It For?’ has a chorus so undeniably catchy it deserves to be heard by anyone who likes their alt. rock playful and sweet. However, it serves as both a calling card and a noose around the band’s neck here, as nothing else on the album really comes close to its perfect pop.

Avi Buffalo opens with ‘Truth Sets In’, gentle acoustic guitars rolling in like Long Beach, California waves (the band are SoCal natives) before Avigdor Zahner-Isenberg’s American-as-apple-pie voice sings about… well, about nothing we haven’t all heard before actually. Relationships can be complicated? Really? Thanks for that pearl of wisdom, young man! An unadventurous opening to say the least then, but ‘Truth Sets In’ is one of several tracks to be rescued by the lovely backing vocals of AB keyboardist Rebecca Coleman; her keening voice adds a brightness to the overall sound, and reminds this reviewer of when Smog used a children’s choir to similar effect on 1999’s Knock Knock. Elsewhere, the bluesy ‘Jessica’ is a love song containing the line “I can’t express these thoughts without mistakes”. While this is surely Zahner-Isenberg attempting to explain himself to the object of the song’s affection, he could just as well be referring to his lyrical naivety.

Throughout the album, however, such nondescript lyrics and unoriginal arrangements are carried by the innocence and enthusiasm which the band clearly has in spades. This is a group happy to be playing and making music, and even if Avi’s songwriting hasn’t quite yet matured fully, there’s plenty of grounds here for hope that the next record should see his talent blossom into something more substantial. Potential is a much stronger weapon than hype after all.