I have a confession. This post should have come about three months ago in March, when I was trying to wean myself off Ava Luna’s newly released Electric Balloon to save myself from some embarrassing last.fm listening stats. Unfortunately, it took Becca Kauffman’s strange behaviour in the video for their infectious Sears Roebuck M&Ms (released a couple of weeks ago) to remind me how excellent these guys are.
They self-identify as ‘nervous soul’—a label that didn’t entirely make sense to me until I saw them play grotty Monday night basement show in London. The five piece played one of the tightest and most enjoyable sets I’ve seen this year, to an enthusiastic (if unjustly small) audience. Frontman Carlos Hernandez flits between smooth cooing falsettos and frantic fretboard twitching throughout, offset on either side by the gentle restraint of keyboard player Felicia Douglas and the unhinged energy of Becca Kauffman. If I was unsure of Ava Luna going in to that show, I was sure as hell convinced by the end of the set, when Kauffman quite literally lost her shit during their final song and the album’s title track, Electric Balloon.
The band undeniably wear their influences on their sleeve—there’s pinches of Dirty Projectors, Pixies and the B52’s in their weirder moments—but rather than feeling derivative of any of their predecessors, Ava Luna seem to fit neatly in the spaces in between. Electric Balloon comprises a mismatched heap of smooth soul, angular grooves and all out freneticism into a wholly enjoyable and idiosyncratic record, which is not necessarily an easy thing to do convincingly.
Electric Balloon is available now via Western Vinyl. Do yourself a favour and catch their live show too, you won’t regret it.