"'Fibromyalgia' is pure mid-'90s L.A. rock, but Avion also shows a deft touch with winsome Britpop and lite-electronica."
- spin.com
"By all intents and purposes, Avion marches to the beat of his own drum. Having moved to Los Angeles from his hometown of New Orleans in 2005, he then moved to Paris where he took up a job as a dishwasher in order to immerse himself in French culture. This however, seems relatively pedestrian compared to his decision to live over the past year in one of the poorest slums in Kenya where he lived and worked at a school for disabled children." - musicremedy.com
"Fun yet complex indie pop for adventurous music fans. Unlike other groups who stick to a certain melodic formula for their songs, Paul Avion doesn’t settle in one method for very long. At times, they have the indie traits of Death Cab for Cutie, while other tracks recall The Beatles ... or Stone Temple Pilots. Avion proves he is on par with other indie singers of our day with better connection to his lyrics. You can pick up the Paul Avion EP, as well as the recently released 'Art School Dropout' single on iTunes now. Keep an ear on Paul Avion."
- collegenews.com
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"Angola U-N-I-T-A" | MP3
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A Condensed History
I grew up in a white trash part of New Orleans, listening to the Carpenters and KISS. My neighbors had feathered hair and Sabbath t-shirts with cut off sleeves, and there was always the smell of weed from their house. One year, the angry boyfriend of the girl next door threw white paint on their front door and the paint stain was there for around a decade. It was that kind of neighborhood. Most people didn't care much what other people thought.
My Dad is from Ecuador, so some summers I would go there and see kids with no shoes selling things by the side of the road, and when I got back home I could never figure out what the fuss was with most people's "problems" of not having a Lexus or whatever. Though I guess I learned happiness and misery are relative; I was constantly failing out of school and kept getting moved from school to school.
(Just to keep symmetry, my mother is Scotch-Welsh and we trace her family back to some guy called William Bowen in the 1700s, if you're curious. But I never got to know her side of the family.)
One year my Dad decided to take me to Spain, because he'd always wanted to go there. I went to a dilapidated school overlooking a Moorish castle, where 14-year-old kids smoked cigarettes in class and listened to gypsy flamenco. It would have been a great year but there were bombs in Europe at that time. I'd briefly decided to become a Jehovah's Witness and I spent a lot of it in a panic attack about the end of the world.
I came back to New Orleans, and got accepted to a magnate creative writing program, even as my regular high school asked me not to return because of my low grades. I'd also started a lame underground newspaper, which they didn't appreciate.
On the weekends I slam-danced at hardcore shows and after class hung out with the jazz students listening to John Coltrane, and they showed me my first jazz chords. I listened to Joni Mitchell, Steely Dan and the Beatles at home, bebop at school recitals, Black Flag with classmates, and whatever was on the jukebox at Saturn Bar: Fats Domino, Patsy Cline, George Jones, Neil Sedaka.
I'm omitting a lot of miserable stuff here because it's not relevant, but this particular stretch of years gradually got uglier and uglier. Eventually I got tired of the ugliness and made a change and moved to Los Angeles. It was in LA that I first heard about things like "shoegaze" and "post-punk," or maybe these styles of music were invented around then.
I guess music from a musician is supposed to sound like only one thing. But I've never been able to do that. Where am I supposed to start? Lola y Manuel? Agnostic Front? Chick Corea? France Gall? Kitty Wells?
That's what I've never been able to figure out ... and also why the music on this site may seem totally schizo to some, or just like a collection of songs to others.
That's my condensed story and disclaimer.
Oh, and p.s. I've still never heard one song by Belle and Sebastian.Not one.
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