Avi Buffalo was once just the kid named Avi (short for Avigdor Zahner-Isenberg). He’s now singing and playing guitar, but was then a vaguely aspirational skateboarder living in Long Beach, who figured between hip trauma and a never-quite-conquered fear of dropping into a half-pipe that he might need to come up with something else to do with the rest of his life. (Maybe journalist? If there were gonna be any left?) His parents never got around to getting him the Game Boy he wanted, so he turned to a handily local guitar. Years of 12-hour days attacking that (plus lessons-to-mentoring with seriously iconoclastic local blues guys) revealed a pretty preternatural talent for making a very special kind of bent but lovely pop song. “You know why it’s good? Because it sounds OLD, but it’s NEW!” said Blues Mentor, sparing the world more labored analysis. And that is the connect-the-dots story of how Avi Buffalo became a band—boy meets guitar. It’s a good old story.

Then boy meets rest of his band at Millikan High in Long Beach—Sheridan Riley on drums, Rebecca Coleman on keys and piano and Arin Fazio (the old man at almost 21, whose dad was a session musician during L.A.’s glossier days) on bass. By the time you read this bio, they will pretty much all be out of high school. And that means we can push past the age thing into the music thing—yes, they’re young, and yes, says Avi, they can effectively metabolize even the most ill-advised tourslops, and yes, many an article is gonna haul out a word like “wunderkind.” But what can you do? They’re gonna graduate into a beautiful little album, and not everybody gets to do that. But even this young, it’s been a long time coming.

Avi (the guy) also loves (like his inspiration Nels Cline) noise. What he calls “really tasteless brutal speaker gargling;” is why the Long Beach Police Department no longer permits him to rehearse in his own garage. But he spent the mid-2000s singing quiet yet resolutely sophisticated songs into whatever free programs he could put on his PC. And they were about as lovely and scruffy as the songs analog guys like Pollard and Barlow and Fox would sing into tape decks during their own long late nights.

VOICEsVOICEs create a sempiternal space filled with sounds and imagery that defy what they've been taught, and challenge what you know. A captivating experiment where two drummers, knowing nothing of the machines and instruments they chose to adopt, construct such hauntingly beautiful music, they awaken even your most subconscious dreams and aversions. A sort of existential realization can occur when these two lovely girls envelope you in their rapturous style of melodic, and at times, rough soundscapes.

The Wailing Wall is 23 year old songwriter Jesse Rifkin. Born in Los Angeles, Rifkin was raised in Annapolis, MD and now resides in New York City. Hospital Blossoms is The Wailing Wall's first full-length LP, and his first release for JDub Records.