The seeds of Ava Luna’s latest album “Infinite-house” came about when the band was holed up in the unincorporated town of Benton, Miss. they happened upon an abandoned residence in the middle of the woods, which served a potent image throughout their writing process. It’s an appropriately spooky beginning for the Brooklyn quintet, whose handful of releases since their 2009 inception have tended toward the spectral and metaphysical—misremembered echoes of a delicate swirl of R&B,plus the ritualistic ecstasy of krautrock. But despite the album’s unsettling origins and the band’s otherworldly history, the lyrical interests of “Billz”, their first single from the record, are overwhelmingly practical.
“Who’s gonna pay my bills?” singer/guitarist Carlos Hernandez repeatedly cries amid a clatter of guitars and cymbals. The familiar question comes at the center of what’s otherwise a relatively straightforward love song, a surprisingly cynical meditation on the most utilitarian of concerns. The band’s instrumental attack, built around a couple of contorted guitar leads and buoyant keyboard lines, remains idiosyncratic, but it strips back a fair amount of the sonic clutter to foreground Hernandez’ vocal and the practicality of his message.
The Fat Angel Sings 