Avi Buffalo :: "Remember The Last Time"

Avi Buffalo are one of the LA bands we didn't see back in July. They came highly recommended, got themselves a Sub Pop deal and a bunch of ink but our schedules didn't match up. Consider our embarassment.

With their Sub Pop debut due at the end of April, "Remember The Last Time" drops as a five-part ode to the lost love, with emotionally-lorn sound-scapes and an eventually thrashing conclusion. In its nearly eight-minutes, "Remember The Last Time" breaks and builds with these breathing keyboards and guitars to warm your ears with attacking stereo. As the lyrics indicate in the bridge, "I've never written a love song," the implication is either that this is the first of many "love songs," or that it should certainly not be misconstrued as such. The arrangement breaks into a million guitars and fractures like a good childhood memory you have every reason to believe is biased.

Listen :: Avi Buffalo - "Remember The Last Time"

Avi Buffalo :: "What's It In For?"

My first real challenge at my first real job out of college was teaching fourth graders how to tell the difference between declarative and interrogative statements. On the surface, for native English speakers, this is not difficult. These students were not native English speakers. But eventually, something clicked; it sort of made sense. It was one of the few successes in a year that I filed somewhere between "flaming disaster" and "moral victory."

Of course, learning how to ask a question accounts nothing for slang. This is where things break down. For instance, "what's up?" or "what's good?" or "how's it hangin'?" are all effective in practice but, when taken literally, are confusing as hell. Language is a wonderfully organized city, but Slang is a talented graffiti artist with no job and a healthy issue with authority. Whatever the structure, we decorate it for better and worse.

So Los Angeles' Avi Buffalo can be excused for their mournful epic, "What's It In For?" and its mild nonsense. Sitting somewhere between first album Shins and last EP Fleet Foxes, Avi Buffalo have something a little crunchy, a little glistening and completely infectious. But that's just the frame. You fill in the rest.

Listen :: Avi Buffalo - "What's It In For?"