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.
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"
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