Avi Buffalo  Sup Pop  * * *

It’s simple: boy meets guitar, boy loves guitar, boy sticks with guitar. Nineteen-year-old Avi Zahner-Isenberg is the kind of DIY classic pop dude from Long Beach who would be really annoying if he wasn’t so good.

A mere three years after he started to learn the instrument (as a sophomore in high school), he has come up with enough songs from nights spent labouring over a laptop to put them out as an album. The result is special, an exceedingly cute summer-daze amalgam of guitar-pop music that takes its cues from Pavement and Guided By Voices, yet adds factors such as youth, naivete, scorching solos, sleight-of-hand melodies and the kind of verve you get when you look a challenge in the face and tell it to feck off. There’s nothing exactly new here, but it’s how Avi and his mates take a fresh view of tested material that makes such a positive difference. avibuffalomusic.com

Download tracks: Five Little Sluts, Remember Last Time