Avers

Six piece rock’n’rollers, Avers­­who hail from Richmond, Virginia­­make the kind of music that goes perfectly with moments of major revelation. Having played with bands like Foo Fighters, Real Estate, and Thao & The Get Down Stay Down, their self­proclaimed “dark echo rock” comes with a retro familiarity and an edge that will make you see old things in a totally new light. The band, whose six members each represent a different kind of cool friend you probably had in college, use a myriad of instruments and esoteric effects to create an infectious sound. This amalgamation of psych rock, hazy pop, and ethereal shoegaze propelled their debut album Empty Light to #9 in WNRN’s year end listener poll, and acted as the soundtrack to summer conversations with strangers on rooftops everywhere.

In April 2014, Adrian, Alex, James, JL, Tyler, and Charlie escaped to a beach house with two car loads of instruments so they could experiment with music away from their vices (screenwriting, conspiracy theories that aren’t conspiracies, carpentry, old cars, history, and physics). What they left with was the groundwork for their second album as a band. On their first, Avers present a collection of 10 psychedelic­inspired tracks influenced by Parquet Courts, The Kinks, and Tame Impala. It is these references that help Empty Light feel a lot like a hidden gem you would have uncovered in a record store in 1969.

Last year, Avers were featured in Speakers and Code’s “Best Songs of 2014,” and are now setting their sights on a new release. Over the next few months, the six members (a drummer since childhood, a life­long cello player, a guitarist raised by folk musicians, a film and TV music composer, a member of The Trillions, and a member of The Head and the Heart), will write, record, and play live as an unsigned band. “On record we are a collaboration of six very different minds writing and recording in different formations to best suit the song...live we aim to create an enormous sounding rock circus that is impossible to ignore.”

Whether performed on stage at a venue or blasted through your own personal speakers, this group of creatives are in the process of making that music that you can’t ignore. Their tracks waft around you like a puff of smoke in a room plastered with tapestries and glow­in­the­dark stars. While listening to Avers, you are guided through an adventure while floating on soundwaves, where their music acts as the telescope.