Ava Luna - Carbon

Ava Luna are a group from Brooklyn who have recently released a new record, Infinite House. Its sound lays somewhere between the fairly vague confines of no-wave and soul, and the less vague, very New York-centric alternative rock formula. Typically, new music released on an established independent label (Western Vinyl) is more the business of Pitchfork, "DIY" and other press-release zeitgeist generators. But this record - albeit from a band I knew I loved - has really stolen my heart. The trouble with the aforementioned sites (those that publish all the same acts doing the press circuit) is that they won't give significant attention to anything that won't return the favour: a major website giving a 'relevant' artist an exceptionally good review will generate a lot of attention and 'clicks' for the site in return, but a major website doing the same for a smaller act with less promotional buzz will, while making a few people happy, do relatively little for the website. Ava Luna are not as marketable as many of their counterparts and subsequently their music is criminally underplayed. It has jittery Captain Beefheart guitars and ESG's funky vocal work, with a heart that follows in a line of awkward erudite New Yorkers -- Talking Heads, James Chance, Dirty Projectors. This track features Carlos Hernandez's calls of "that's the trouble with... that's the trouble with love", possibly the highpoint of the album for me. Anyway, this blog is for the overlooked and I think that, for what it is, this record is exactly that. It is fantastic, nothing less.

Label: Western Vinyl
Year: 2015
Genre: Rock, No-Wave, Experimental, Soul