By It’s our Bandcamp Pick of the Week, featuring ahem’s twinkling, heart-on-your-sleeve rock record AVOIDER!
ahem – AVOIDER
Genre: Power Pop, Midwest Rock
Favorite Tracks: “Lapdog,” “Sunroof,” “Eddy”
AVOIDER is the feeling of summer both beginning and ending—infinite possibilities abound amidst the dread of youth and freedom being over before they really began.
ahem follow up their great 2019 debut TRY AGAIN with a record that sounds even more quintessentially Minneapolis, exploring the proto-punk and jangle pop elements of their music more deeply. Where their debut often times felt harder and faster, AVOIDER kitchen-sinks the shaggy, early alternative edges of college rock bands like Soul Asylum or the Jayhawks into something decidedly midwestern and magical—in particular, you can hear hometown hero Paul Westerberg in each song, from the spirited opening of “Sunroof” to the rousing slacker anthem “Pinwheel.” Like some of the best Big Star-indebted power pop songwriting of the last few years (I’m immediately recalling the excellent Big Nothing album DOG HOURS), ahem lock in on a warm, heart-on-your-sleeve naïveté that feels comfortingly endless. To borrow an online bit from writer and critic Steven Hyden, grab the CD and let AVOIDER become a part of your own patio hall of fame. You can find the record over on Bandcamp via Forged Artifacts!
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