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Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Let's Talk About... Avi Buffalo, Straight Outta High School (Near Compton)

Posted by Raquel Nasser on Tue, Dec 29, 2009 at 3:00 PM

At age 18, would you rather: a) Have your diploma and be hanging a Che Guevera poster in your dorm room at that fancy-shmancy Liberal Arts college on the sweater vest-wearing, intellectually-superior East Coast; b) Have your diploma, land a booking agent at Billions, play for throngs of drugged-up festival goers at Monolith and be taken in under the warm, golden wings of Seattle's Sub Pop?

Long Beach's Avi Buffalo picked the second option. They might be slight aural doppelgangers of the Shins—what with lead singer Avigdor Zahner-Isenberg's prepubescent vocal register and those utterly dreamy guitar riffs—but you've gotta give these kids some credit; they rock. And they're, like, 3/4ths legal. And much better than fellow hormone ragers, Tiny Masters of Today... those kids would suck to babysit for.

Sub Pop recently put out an Avi Buffalo seven-inch with two singles, "What's In It For?," and "Jessica." One, or both, of these songs will appear on their full length, which is due to release in early spring 2010. The band was up in Portland for MFNW (they played a few shows with labelmates Beach House). Hopefully they'll be back up again soon... maybe on their way back from SXSW? OMFG?! WTF!

LISTEN:

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

Also, here is a nice little set they played for Daytrotter in Elliott Smith's old studio in Van Nuys, CA.