Anti-pop is on the come-up. The genre has garnered a great deal of popularity amongst millennials over the past few years. Many anti-pop subsets, such as bedroom-pop and emo-pop, have flooded Spotify playlists and resulted in the creation of their own widely followed playlists. Los Angeles artist Joe Avio has confidently asserted his position between these different sub-genres of anti-pop. Avio introduced his music to the world this past July and has fired off a number of singles to date. His vocal performances hit listeners like a breath of fresh air and are backed by subtly ambient production that adds texture and depth to his self-reflective anthems. The artist manages to calm and stimulate listeners with irresistibly silky choruses that sound great and feel euphoric. Avio is a valuable asset to the Los Angeles in-house creative and management collective Ourros, alongside prior interviewee Sally Boy. The group's cohesion comes from pristine sound quality and attention to detail with each release.
Avio attended the University of Southern California, where he studied music and prepared the artist project he launched this year. While in school, Avio met and collaborated with fellow USC-artists and producers, including Grant Boutin (a.k.a Grant) and Adam Yaron, on the singles 'Without Your Love' and 'Waste' respectively. Each track that Avio has released is accompanied by dim-lit, innovative visual components that provide a glimpse into his artistry but leave us curious to find out more about the project. The first single 'Models' opens with a blissful, beautifully sung response to superficiality and questions of love in the internet age. Each subsequent track is conceptually derived from the others yet demonstrates a range of versatility in production and style.
The well-versed sounds designed to flood listeners' brainwaves serve as the backbone of Avio's debut album, Whatever Will We Do, out today. The project is served on a silver platter for fans of alternative and indie-pop to consume. As the turn of the decade has brought unprecedented challenges to our lives, Avio's music serves as a bright escape from darker new realities. This album fortifies itself onto a list of music we did not know we needed until we heard it. Stylistically, Whatever Will We Do encompasses the sounds that music fans have embraced and fallen in love with this past year.
The nine-song album begins in a Bon Iver fashion: twinkling instrumentals and horns lead the way in the opening track 'Wholly.' The song provides previews of the experimental, polished sounds that Avio assertively sprinkles throughout the record. This introduction paves the way for my personal favorite 'Come Over,' a song that feels both uniquely familiar and foreign simultaneously; it is unlike anything I have heard before. The thought-provoking track challenges our comprehension of autotune, song structure, and vocal layering. The album also features ballads-turned-bangers 'Enough' and 'Anymore,' both of which start with stripped-down weeps that progressively amplify to anthemic heights by each track-end. It concludes with a self-reflective and forward-looking 'Forever.' The finale opens the door for a world of possibilities that soon-to-be-fans can expect to hear after this budding period in Avio's life.
Avio sat down with us and broke down the creation process of this record: “It’s funny, I didn’t realize I was making a record until it was almost finished. After two years of making music all the time at school, recycling ideas, pulling them apart, and putting them back together again, these nine songs were all that was leftover. If you listen beyond the grand production, I think it’s possible to hear the isolated way in which many of the tracks were started. Most of these songs came into being alone and with headphones on (even though they didn’t get finished that way). That’s how I spent a lot of my time in school, and that’s why the project is such a good representation of my life for the last little while.”
Check out the full album below and watch the official performance video for 'Enough.'
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