Aviette
Until We Hear From Dave
Label: Draw Fire Records

With Until We Hear From Dave, Minneapolis-based Aviette unfurls its postmodern indie rock blitzkrieg upon the few intellectuals left amongst the musical desolation known as the Midwest.

Consecrated in the same musical tableaux as the Kills and Andy Warhol’s The Velvet Underground & Nico, it’s downright impossible to tell Aviette’s principal songwriter hadn’t touched a guitar or microphone until senior year of college.

Recorded in Chicago with Johnathan Raymond and producer Devon Bryant (Sybris, Brighton MA, Scotland Yard Gospel Choir, The Saps), Until We Hear From Dave features groovy grooves and nonchalant, agnostic vocals surprisingly too infectious to be contagious.

Aviette on Minneapoliscast (mp3)

We sat down with the trio — Holly Muñoz (vocals/guitar), Justin Hartke (bass) and Kyle Larson (drums) — to talk about the group, Dave and blogging. Read on…

What’s the backstory of your group?
Holly: Kyle and I met Justin at Guitar Center about two and half years ago, which is also, interestingly enough, where we met our producer, Devon Bryant and our engineer, Jonathan Raymond. Much like Jon and
Devon, Justin is very talented, patient, and gracious. We played our first show on August 20, 2004 at Luther’s Blues in Madison. We started working on Until We Hear from Dave in October of 2005 and released the record in September of 2006.
Justin: Holly and Kyle came to the guitar store where I worked. I was impressed by them immediately — they were confident, but not cocky. They were professional, and they were sincere. You could just tell that they were good people. When holly needed an electric guitar, I gave her a great
Deal, and she gave me a cd. We started playing together about a week later.

What does the title of your new disc mean? Who is Dave? What did you do with him?
Holly: The title has to do with intellectual property rights.
Dave is someone I admire. Dave and I have communicated with each other in a puzzling and wonderful manner.
Kyle It has to do with respecting other people’s creativity. Dave is just a guy. Asked him a question
Justin: To me, Until We Hear from Dave reflects Aviette’s current place in the rock&roll universe. We’re not quite ready to quit our day jobs, but we’re making records and our songs are getting played on the radio. in that sense, dave represents the dream — to make a career out of playing rock music.

I see Holly has a b-day coming up. What’s the worst present you’ve ever received?
Holly: I was stood up on my 16th birthday. The guy I was making out with at the time was supposed to take me out for dinner. It was a total cliché…all dressed up with nowhere to go.
Kyle: A fuzzy navel on my 21st birthday.
Justin: I was dumped (the day after my birthday). On the other hand, one of my favorite birthday presents ever was The Last Drag by The Samples, a record that changed the way I think
about music.

Who are your Top 3 influences?
Holly: My conscience; Harry Nilsson; The Cure
Kyle: Janet Weiss; Dave Grohl; Kurt Vonnegut
Justin: Mudhoney. I love them. They remind me to make some noise, to have fun, and not to take it too seriously. Books. I’m reading Charles Baxter right now — he writes some of the most human characters I’ve ever read. science fiction. I can’t lie; I’m a geek at heart.

Name a song, tell us what it’s about and something cool about it.
Holly: “1907″ is a biography of Carl Holst, my maternal grandfather. While I took some artistic license in deciding which stories to include in the narrative, there is little embellishment. He really had a two-fingered bowling ball, took a job as a caddy to buy his first bike, and lost all of his teeth as a teenager because his family was too poor to buy milk. He passed away at the age of 97 in November of 2004.
Kyle: “Ruling Planets” is about relationships that are meant to be, but also meant to end. We shelved the song shortly after writing it. About a year later we revisited it on a whim, reworked it, and it ended up being my favorite track on the album.
Justin: “All Hollowed Out” was one of the very first songs we wrote as Aviette. For me, that song was the first big moment when I knew we would be able to carry the music as a trio.

What was the recording process like?
Holly: Life affirming, exhausting, hilarious, and entirely too short.
Kyle: Long, short, tiring, invigorating, pleasant, and irritating…overall, an awesome experience.
Justin: Two years rush by with absurd speed. It was tough for me to have the mixing process take place 400 miles and two states away, but I’m very happy with the results.

What else is new?
Justin: We all blog now. Which is both awkward and awesome.
Holly: 1) Next show is Jan. 11 at O’Gara’s with The Gravities and Big Muck.
2) Until We Hear From Dave weighed in at #8 in The Onion’s Top 20 Local CDs of 2006.
3) We just recorded a song for Friends with Benefits: Volume 2, a compilation put together by Dave Andersen of Minor7 Studios. Proceeds from this project benefit the Minnesota Chapter of the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.
4) We are heading into the studio at the end of January to start working on a new record.