Zee Avi

Zee Avi (Brushfire)

By Erin Wolf
Published: May 31st, 2009 | 9:00am

Singer-songwriters run the risk of being the proverbial "dime a dozen," save one or two little quirks that blow away all the other static-y competition. Zee Avi, like other strong-voiced musicians before her — such as Chan Marshall, Regina Spektor and Jolie Holland — has the both the power of quirk and the raw but sweet talent to make her voice stand out without having to raise it. Avi adds a little oomph to her torch songs through her perfectly fitting, bare-bones instrumental style that up-plays her coy, bird-like voice.

Originally from Borneo, Avi grew up expecting to be a lawyer, but picked up a guitar instead, and it was apparent that her hands were meant pluck strings rather than bang a gavel. Avi’s natural magnetism to the instrument led her to write and record her own songs and post them on YouTube, where they were discovered by Kris Rowley, a U.K. musician who in turn posted her videos on his site. Suddenly, Avi’s sweetly voiced strummings were no longer quite so secret.

From the sunny outlook on bitter disappointment of a broken promise on “Bitter Heart” to a similar flippancy on "Poppy" — based on a drug-torn relationship all about “slapping veins” and “tinfoil and sugar everywhere” — where Avi sings in a jazz-tinged scat, “The poppy took my baby away from me,” Avi is slyly not what she seems. Bleeding reverb into sparkling, hollowed out songs on dense subject matter is just one specialty, and she does it with ease.

Her standout take on the ukelele, breathing contemporary life into it from being a mere island folk instrument, is refreshing. Avi adds snippets of retort with her ukele: “So I called and called / My phone was on silent / I was at the gym” on “Kantoi,” where Avi takes a snappy cheater's tale and turns it into contemporary folk-pop with attitude. She stirs things up with the same dash of attitude in her cover of Morrissey’s “First Of the Gang to Die,” in which the tale of tough is made poignant through Avi’s crooning and spaciously strummed-out acoustic guitar. If Avi keeps it up, she won’t be the one doing the covers — she’s got enough charisma to stand alone.

—

Zee Avi official site

Zee Avi MySpace

Brushfire Records