Overcome With...: A Review of Avi Buffalo's "At Best Cuckold"

The prodigal son returns. Avigdor Zahner-Isenberg and his Avi Buffalo project all but disappeared from the ravenous public eye. Never mind his being championed by the likes of the NME and Pitchfork, as well as a slot at Primavera Barcelona, Zahner-Isenberg went away, and made it clear he didn't want to be found. However, this may have been all part of the plan. His self titled (and brilliant debut) felt as if it was always one step ahead of you. Those seemingly horny couplets actually revealed a bruised and battered Zahner-Isenberg after multiple listens. At one he point he claimed "I don't wanna die", before offering the contradictory "I just wanna die". This kid was definitely nineteen, and he was definitely smarter than you, able to make a song about masturbation utterly heartbreaking (doesn't hurt that he's a total aficionado on guitar).

Four years can be an eternity in the indie rock realm, but four years can also feel like an eternity in someone's personal life. Zahner-Isenberg skipped on college to spend his formative years touring, and in his words, "just hang out". He left his teen years behind, reached the legal drinking age, and what could be the most life changing for some, separated from former girlfriend and band member, Rebecca Coleman. The cover of his sophomore release, At Best Cuckold, seems strangely appropriate when put into context. A twenty-three old laying on his back, looking at the ceiling, Solo cup on one side of him, a guitar propped up in the corner. I imagine him as a bit disillusioned, a bit depressed, and maybe even a bit agoraphobic, as his stance reveals an unwillingness to open the door to the outside world.

At Best Cuckold sounds like someone who spent the past four years in their head, not confronting what lays beyond the front door. Zahner-Isenberg falls deeper down the rabbit hole of the lyrical motifs that makes Avi Buffalo, but this time, everything is a touch of shade darker. On "Think It's Gonna Happen Again", he details how "last night I ran over two dogs, then I ate them". The unsettling aura reaches its apex when he confesses, "I think it's gonna happen again". On "Found Blind" he finally leaves, just to trouble the employees of the campsite next door for some weed. Something has been going in Zahner-Isenberg's head, and post breakup malaise is only the start of it; the dissolution of romantic relations has hurled Zahner-Isenberg into a candy-coated Tim Burtonesque nightmare.

But as Zahner-Isenberg grows stranger by the second, the music itself has matured, with all the rough edges smoothed over. Avi Buffalo had firebrand guitar solos akin to Doug Martsch and Isaac Brock, coupled with the Californian sunshine pop that was oh so popular in 2010, lending the otherwise brilliant record a sense of identity crisis at times. At Best Cuckold benefits considerably from a heightened presence of cohesiveness. At the center of the instrumentation is still Zahner-Isenberg's guitar, but this time its six strings are backed up by piano, an ever present bass, organ, flute, clarinet and even a French horn. "She Is Seventeen" features a lilting piano led chorus, one of the most breathtakingly beautiful moments of the record. The too short "Two Cherished Underlings" drifts along like a Flaming Lips ballad, with help from Zahner-Isenberg's (sometimes) uncanny ability to reacall Wayne Coyne.

But Zahner-Isenberg himself is responsible for the majority of crushing moments of the record, due to his clever and heartbreaking lyricism. At times, the Wayne Coyne comparison rings even more true, as he allows metaphor to drive home the meaning of the song (nothing as overwrought as Yoshimi or radical skeletons though); but at other times, he comes across as disarmingly personal, such as the aforementioned "Found Blind", with the wonderfully rendered couplet of "I'm walking barefoot / with some blank CDs". On "Two Cherished Underlings", he recalls trying to comfort a rather unwilling partner by singing "making love, ain't nothing wrong with that". The AM soft rock of "So What" comes across as featherweight with its repetitive chorus ("so what, so what, so what"), but at its core, Zahner-Isenberg is impatient, waiting for a lover to fill the void of the last one. "I had a dream you were acting normal / it made me wake up feeling like a stone" he sings at one point, later intoning "if every dream I have betrays me like this / I want a lover who can calm my ends".

Zahner-Isenberg has always come off as a deliberate personality, pushing you to the point of where the discomfiting lyrics reveal something within yourself. That being said, "Memories of You" capitalizes on the confusion some self reflection would entail. Hell, he begins by singing "memories of you, they only come to me when I'm with you" before referring himself to a "cheeseball on fire", making this one of Avi Buffalo's greatest and most frustrating songs yet. He'll make you wince with his immature remarks, but the gorgeous double tracked chorus drags you right back in, before climaxing in one of the album's only two blistering guitar solos. "Overwhelmed With Pride", the most lovingly crafted song on the record, poses our hero as some kind of lonely wanderer, but who still can't help but be overcome by some of the simplest of human emotions.

The record reaches its peak with the final two songs, that don't just act as album highlights, but career highlights for Avi Buffalo. The closer, "Won't Be Around No More", is a lovely Neil Young indebted tune, recalling "candlelight days, driving home late from Pasadena". Zahner-Isenberg hits us with his most conflicted line ("asked if I was ready to love you then / said 'I s'pose I am' / I think I did but knew it wasn't right, no") as the fuzz pedal dabbled chorus bids us goodbye. But it's the penultimate track, "Oxygen Tank", that certifies Zahner-Isenberg's presence as one of this year's most definitive songwriters. A tinge of unease haunts this hazy track, as Zahner-Isenberg sets the stage for an escape from a regrettable love. Strings and piano swirls around him as he warns his partner of "a man carrying an oxygen tank / is gonna kill me and my family too / if I don't stop seeing you". It comes off as a laughable attempt of breakup, before he adds "if I don't stop seeing through those lies you tell me every day". Because a destructive relationship can equate to a fate worse than death. This realization sends Zahner-Isenberg reeling, as he's plagued by images of him hanging from trees and bridges, the sounds of babies crying and suffocating, and the symbolism of the birds in the sky (you guessed it, pain). It gets to the point where there's nothing left to say, and a paranoid guitar solo closes out this anxious, troubling feeling.

At the hear of it, Zahner-Isenberg is like any other self aware young adult. He's a bit horny, a bit fucked up, and maybe a bit too intelligent for his own good. At Best Cuckold acts as the purging second record that all young artists end up making, from Surfer Blood's Pythons (an example of a not too great one) and Weezer's Pinkerton (perhaps the best of all time). It's impossible to say where Avi Buffalo will go next, as At Best Cuckold offers them as some kind of paradox: young and old sentiments conflating into some kind of confusing whole. But hey, that's what happens when a certain age is reached. Shit doesn't make sense, and like Avi Buffalo's music, it's unclear if it ever will.

Avi Buffalo - At Best Cuckold
8.5/10
Recommended Tracks - "So What", "Memories of You", "Two Cherished Underlings", "Think It's Gonna Happen Again", "Oxygen Tank", "Won't Be Around No More"

The Slow Education: A Review of Cymbals Eat Guitars' "Lose"

The confrontation of loss warrants something more than the acknowledgement that something is indeed gone. These things, whether they have been lost through clumsiness, ignorance, arguments, fights, or even death, all come with a history surrounding them. One must come to terms that they have lost something, and it will not be returning. A bike may be stolen, and the same model repurchased, but the child's impassioned cry of "but it's not the same", informs you that it can never be the same. That was the bike a seven year old used to ride circles around the sprinklers at Carroll Park, before slipping on a particularly wet spot and careening into a nearby bench; the child lost their first tooth because of that bike. As Gareth Campesinos sang on "Life Is a Long Time", "there's cartography in every scar".

A plethora of feelings come with loss: confusion, fear, sadness, anger, relief, shock. And there seems to be no better medium than music to convey the inherent confusion packaged with losing something. Some may ham it on, slathering their songwriting in superficial sentiments. Others, decide to take the surprisingly honest and straightforward route. Armed with an acoustic guitar and supple voice, Mark Kozelek (Sun Kil Moon) crafted the masterpiece Benji, earlier this year, chronicling those who have died, from his childhood to adult life; everyone from strangers, classmates, second cousins and grandmothers. These aren't just an outsider's perspective of stories, as Kozelek deals with his own emotional bloodletting, putting on display the aforementioned sentiments that loss entails. Others, however, put it in more blunt terms, like Cymbals Eat Guitars frontman/guitarist Joseph D'Agostino belts in the opener of his band's third and best record: "I don't wanna die!"

Cymbals Eat Guitars, those perpetually underrated indie rock heavyweights who have been making waves since 2009, are anything but revivalists. They wear their influences on their sleeves, but in a proud manner. D'Agostino, simply put, is a music nerd, who's favorite album of the aughts is Wilco's perfect Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, quickly followed by the indie rock touchstone The Meadowlands, by The Wrens. Their music brings to mind the indie rock heroes of a different time, from Modest mouse to Elliott Smith, but nothing is ever derivative. When "lo-fi" was you and your grandmother's favorite genre, Cymbals Eat Guitars came out the gate swinging with 2009's Why There Are Mountains, that if needed a one word descriptor, would be big. One would be hard pressed to find a single chorus, as songs carried on like long lost deep cuts from Built to Spill's Perfect From Now On (with a Rhodes piano) fronted by Charles Bissell of The Wrens  (who ended up working on the record). ",,,And the Hazy Sea" cold clocked listeners as an opener, moving through six different crescendos, each more cathartic than the last. There were jaunty pop numbers, like "Indiana" and "Wind Phoenix (Proper Name)", but the knottier "Cold Spring" and "Share" gave way to the band's sophomore effort, Lenses Alien.

The most fitting one word descriptor for Lenses Alien would be paranoid. Rife with violence and anxiety, Lenses Alien opted for more challenging arrangements, making it even harder to parse D'Agostino's brick-like verbiage. The band's manager told them it was time to make their "Two Weeks" after a stint opening for Grizzly Bear; "Two Weeks" this is not. The characters of Lenses Alien eat dried mushrooms, kill state troopers, are stalked by highway snipers and "fuck each other in the guest rooms".

According to what's been written, every Cymbals Eat Guitars records is incredibly distinct from the next. Lose continues with this trend, tapping into the unknown, basking in its unexplored textures and D'Agostino trades in his vague lyrics recalling suburban malaise for something more personal. Similar to Owen Pallett's excellent In Conflict (also released this year), we as the listener are witness to D'Agostino jumping off the deep end into autobiography, bearing his own experiences to us. The central theme is D'Agostino's best friend, Benjamin High, who passed away at age 19 due to a heart condition.

The period of coping with loss is different for everyone, the gestation period constantly fluctuating. High died before Why There Are Mountains was released, pushed back due to the rerecording of High's parts (he originally sang the chilling refrain of "when the police bring me in" from "Share"). Instead of confronting the sorrow of High's death, D'Agostino disappeared further into his own head on Lenses Alien, and now it's been six years since High's passing. Yet another similar record in sentiment is Superchunk's I Hate Music (D'Agostino has the uncanny ability to recall  Mac McCaughan at times), in which McCaughan doesn't focus on the details of a close friend's passing, but reminisces of both the good and bad memories. The most dour points of the record are when D'Agostino gives us a glimpse of his recovering from High's death, in which he finds himself incredibly lonely and isolated. However, there's no moping here, as every song is an eloquently told story.

Perhaps the most engaging story is the record's opener, "Jackson". We are placed in the middle of a trip gone sour to Six Flags. Over a gentle piano line and swelling strings, the song explodes before coming back down to one of the most intriguing lyrical openers ever: "you're taking two Klonopin / so you can quit flipping / and face our friends". Who knew a story of High, D'Agostino and his present girlfriend could be so gripping and powerful? The song climaxes with D'Agostino shouting the aforementioned "I don't wanna die". Imagine Elliott Smith's "Stupidity Tries" launched into the stratosphere.

After the six minute epic, the record moves to the more punchier single, "Warning". The song will most likely be remembered for D'Agostino's recalling of High when he was growing sicker ("looking mighty ghostly just like Bowie on Soul Train"), but the real gut punch comes when D'Agostino remembers getting goosebumps on High's roof, admitting that "friendship is the biggest myth". A sour note alchemy encapsulates indie rock's entire cannon into a svelte three minutes, worthy of being put up against Built to Spill's "The Plan" and Pavement's "Silence Kit".

What follows may be the album's biggest surprise: a harmonica. The cow punk "XR" rushes ahead, pushed even further by D'Agostino's distorted vocals and the squalling harmonica, as we are subject to what D'Agostino considers the record's thesis statement. There was a period of time following High's death, when D'Agostino would get high from the moment he woke up, continuing until he went to sleep once again. A way of coping with the loss in his life led to the "summer benzo blackouts" which "erased [his] identity". The song is somehow able to successfully map the multitude of different emotions: bittersweet reminiscence ("fuck your learner's permit, drive down to Philly with me / see The Wrens in a rec room"), depression ("wanna wake up listening to records / but those old feelings elude me"), realization ("broke my bong on purpose, hit the ceiling with weed"), and what stings the most, the acknowledgement of his begrudging drug habit, that also cites High: "High is just a tingling behind my eyes / got no serotonin left".

Like the Philly rec room in the preceding track, D'Agostino uses location as a way to map out whatever he was feeling at a certain time. The six minute "Place Names" recalls road trips to Cape May and Mystic, while "Child Bride" places us in a Cymbals Eat Guitars show in Orlando. The post-punk stomp of the former finds D'Agostino remarking on High's skin's "hepatitis tint", before descending into a feedback jam, anchored by Matt Whipple's melodic bass. The latter, a lilting ballad with Brian Hamilton's beautiful piano and graceful strings, acts as the record's centerpiece, different from anything the band has ever done before. A disappeared victim of child abuse from D'Agostino's youth shows up at a concert, strung out and explaining how his new girlfriend has turned him onto crack. The realization hits D'Agostino, who still only in his twenties, has led a privileged life and is now the leader of a successful band, has no reason to succumb to the trappings of drugs. The friend offers a hit, before D'Agostino confesses "I can't / my heart would explode".

If you thought the record was dipping into a quieter second half, Hamilton lets out a wailing smear of organ to kick off the gargantuan "Laramie". A lyrical masterpiece, recalling a time when D'Agostino and High got caught in a snowstorm in Laramie, Wyoming, the song moves through multiple movements within its eight minutes. D'Agostino once again confronts his worrisome drug habit in the rollicking second half, singing "all alone with my strip mall memories / chasing the same thrills I was when I was eighteen". As a band that has used location as such a key point of their music, the feeling is all too real when D'Agostino sings "your street's just a place / has no memory at all".

Cymbals Eat Guitars have always felt somewhat out of place when it comes to their regional locations; they identified as a New York band with Why There Are Mountains, despite lyrics citing the Pacific Northwest, and on their newest, they settle comfortably into a New Jersey indebted niche. However, the slice of life portraits of "Chambers" and "Lifenet" hark back to Lenses Alien, with references to Staten Island. An unfinished drug deal in "Chambers" (due to how "the feds closed Silk Road") leads to D'Agostino driving up to Stapleton, remaking how Staten Island is "technically NYC / but dear Christ it gets so lonely". "Chambers" is the closest Cymbals Eat Guitars may get to a pop hit (with shades of post-reunion Superchunk), but the downtuned bass of The Wrens indebted "Lifenet" does away with any notions of the band streamlining their sound. It's always a risk for an artist to make a disarmingly autobiographical album, as references to personal events can easily slip through the fingers of listeners; D'Agostino confronts this in the chorus, as he sings "sorry, you don't know these people / so what could this mean to you?". Little does he know how much meaning Lose can convey, from its opener, to the last gasps of "2 Hip Soul".

Why There Are Mountains ended with a whimper and Lenses Alien ended with a scream, so it makes sense for "2 Hip Soul" to be an appropriation of the two. Whipple and drummer Andrew Dole lock into a rhythmic waltz time, as D'Agostino lets dark guitar cascades mesh with Hamilton's piano playing, washing over the song. One can tell the song will be lyrically dense and brilliant from the utterance of the first line: "I learned to scream / to 'Bone Machine' / my windshield spit / was glistening". D'Agostino then steps outside of himself, pinpointing the exact moment innocence was lost for his group of friends. A rich high school peer, Sesta, gets his due for carving swastikas into trees and breaking into Popcorn Park Zoo to club animals to death with PVC piping, when he falls face first into the firepit at a local campground ("we had to find a new place to drink" D'Agostino intones). In the dirge like portion of the song, D'Agostino chronicles his return to Pinelands High School in a whisper ("months pass, and he's back in class / with a compression sleeve, and a mask") before letting out a scream, from both his guitar and throat, about his stoned blue eyes now "snowed in" from a vicodin habit. D'Agostino croons the unsettling "every rich kid's basement smells the same", before the song reaches its hurtling climax.

For all the shows Cymbals Eat Guitars have been playing in New York City, I've been gone for all but one of them. It felt like a necessity to see them, and I instantly jumped on the opportunity to see an incredibly cathartic show at Soho's Apple store, which concluded with D'Agostino ripping his guitar a new one, before writhing on the floor during the climax of "Laramie". The desire to see Cymbals Eat Guitars live was further affirmation of the kind of  band they are. They have filled the shoes of groups like Built to Spill, Modest Mouse, Pavement, 12 Rods, The Dismemberment Plan, and especially The Wrens-- bands that are readily identifiable by their seminal classic records, but seem incapable of repeating said records. The Wrens get a direct reference on "Laramie", as D'Agostino and High have "'I Guess We're Done Duels'" in D'Agostino's car, splitting Kev and Charles' parts (it wouldn't come as a surprise if the "forward 13 months line" is a reference to The Meadowlands' "13 Months In 6 Minutes"), and the comparison comes full circle.

The line between peer and revivalist has always been considerably distinct between the indie rock of the nineties and those who ape from it. A whole generation (mine), must come to terms with the fact that we may never live through some miraculous resurrection of Modest Mouse's heyday, and that can be crushing at times. So Lose comes at the perfect time, ensuring we'll know the songs by hear for the changing of leaves and visibility of breath. The times we play Elliott Smith at dusk, The Dismemberment Plan on train rides home, Sunny Day Real Estate alone in our rooms.When our favorite records make perfect sense, from 12 Rods' Split Personalities to Codeine's The White Birch. It's no doubt these records are classics, considered nearly peerless for the longest time (some recent bands have achieved these ranks, but not many: Titus Andronicus, Japandroids, Fucked Up, Los Campesinos!, The Hotelier). Cymbals Eat Guitars are no longer the inspired ones, but rather peers; the big indie rock band for my generation, and many generations to come.

Cymbals Eat Guitars - Lose
10/10
Recommended Tracks: "Jackson", "Warning", "XR", "Place Names", "Child Bride", "Laramie", "Chambers", "Lifenet", "2 Hip Soul"