Avi's Buffalo Stance - Avi Buffalo Interview

Avigdor Zahner-Isenberg may be only 23 but, in music industry years, he’s a regular Methuselah. As frontman and sole permanent member of sun-dappled pop group Avi Buffalo he’s about to release his second album and embark on an umpteenth world tour. Considering he was just 17 when Sub-pop signed him, the Californian is well-used to people remarking about his youth – as a matter of fact, he’s rather fed up with it.

“It was sort of a media thing around the first record,” he sighs. “I got bored of it. Nobody in the industry treated me differently ‘cos of my age. It didn’t seem to be an issue with anyone I worked with. Nonetheless, I always got asked about it. Maybe that’s starting to go away now.”
He was missing in action several years, quietly toiling on new LP At Best Cuckold. A great deal of heartache went into a project that, at its finest, sounds like Rufus Wainwright fronting Neutral Milk Hotel – which is to say, is lush and overwrought and free-floating all at once.
“It wasn’t easy,” says Zahner-Isenberg. “Were there moments of hitting a wall? Oh yeah. Lots and lots. I pressed on. Kept working – in situations like that, it’s what you do. I always take my time. On my first LP [self titled and released in 2010] I spent, like, a year on overdubs. I like to work at my own pace.”
He grew up in Long Beach, a city of 500,000 adjacent to Los Angeles and famous to music lovers in this part of the world as the town Snoop Dogg calls home. The way Zahner-Isenberg tells it, he and the Snoop didn’t have quite the same childhood experiences. Their worlds were very, very different.
“I grew up in a boring suburb,” he says. “There wasn’t a lot to do. I guess that is one of the reasons I got into music. It was a form of escapism. I moved to Los Angeles for a while, then back to Long Beach.
“Each has their advantages: in LA you are surrounded by really smart, creative people – you get carried along, it inspires you to be creative. In Long Beach, there are creative folk. The point is, they’re more closed off, doing their own thing. I’m not knocking that – it has its worth.”
He wasn’t worried about taking time away. Partly because he didn’t actually take much time away: he toured a lot and, when off the road, worked on the album.
“In the process I’ve learned a lot and become a much better musician,” he says. “That’s been immensely useful. I means I could go work in a studio as an engineer if I wanted to. And I got an album out of it to boot. It was a great process all around.”
The band has gone through several line-up changes, though this hasn’t really had much of an impact on Zahner-Isenberg’s development as songwriter. In the studio it’s really just him - he wants Avi Buffalo to be a group rather than a solo project in part because he prefers touring with an ensemble. He enjoys the companionship and solidarity.
“Right now I’m aiming to go on tour and make enough so that I can pay my band. That’s my goal. I love working with these people.”

Avi Buffalo's At Best Cuckhold album gets a live airing in Whelan’s, Dublin on October 5.