Artist Spotlight: Avaberée

This week’s Artist Spotlight is the fabulous Brisbane three-piece band Avaberée (aye-va-ber-ee). We had a chat to Aimee about the band’s new EP, ‘In Your Arms I Found My Secrets’, is being launched tonight at the Triffid, their 90s guilty pleasure jams and what’s up next for them!

Introduce yourselves! Who are you and what do you play?

I’m Aimee and I sing and play the Corg and a bit the sample pad. Then we have, with the short blonde hair, Genevieve she sings. And then we have Irena, with the longer blonde hair she plays the Corg. Then we have Michael who is the new addition to our live sound and he plays the live drums and abeleton.

How did the band come together?

Well we all met in high-school, Gen and Irena have known each other since they were really small ‘cause their families were friends and I kinda came into the equation when we were in grade 10, which was 8 years ago now. We just started doing vocal arrangements of songs because we were all really into choirs and influenced by our music teacher who we had for 5 years. Then we all went to separate Uni’s and continued doing song-writing and stuff together but not really, you know, trying to make it or anything. Then about 3 years ago we wrote some songs and decided to release a few singles and last year we went over to America and recorded ten songs (which will be released soon) and the rest is history!

How would you describe your sound to someone who’s never heard you before?

Dreamy three-part girl harmonies, kinda similar to…we’ve been aligned with the 90s band Wilson Philips, but like a cooler version.

Do you have any stand out musical influences?

We’ve been inspired by lots of different stuff. I guess electronic wise we were really inspired by James Blake and really into like the sampling vocal effects that Kimbra does. While we were in the studio last year we were very influenced by Metronomy’s album, the kind of upbeatness it has. In terms of harmonies all the old school, like The Beach Boys, even The Bee Gees. We just kinda bring all our different influences together to be what we were. We started off very vocally driven with harmonies and we used to be very acoustic. Now we’ve had to bring in those more electronic vibes to make the sound bigger and be able to play bigger venues and tour.

Any guilty pleasures?  

Definitely, one guilty pleasure of ours, that we play every time we go on a road trip or are overseas together, we literally bust out The Corrs. We figured out that when we were younger our parents used to play us The Corrs. So we just all know the words to like, Runaway. We always go to say that that’s an influence of ours but then we’re like ‘ooh I don’t know if should!’

What is the best gig you’ve played together this far?

I don’t know we’ve played loads of really fun shows. I guess the shows that really inspired us to want to tour and take music further, were when we were fortunate enough to support Matt Corby for a lot of his garden shows. So we did a Queensland Tour and a New South Wales tour and the odd show here and there with him. But we also recently played a show here, at the Triffid for the Fleetwood Mac tribute night. It was a sold out show, like 850 people, adoring Fleetwood Mac fans, it was such a cool feeling playing to a sold out, huge room and getting to play our own songs as well as pay tribute to such an amazing band. So I’d have to say that’s the most recent favourite gig.

What does the next year have in store for Avaberée?

I guess just touring lots; we’re going overseas in October to play some shows in America. Hopefully into the next year we’ll have this EP released and then we’re going to release it again in the states. Then we’ve got another EP waiting! The plan is just to tour and play as many shows as we can and get our music heard.