Friday Avenue

What first started out as couple of friends writing music on Friday nights eventually evolved into Friday Avenue: a four-piece riff driven rock band from Brownsville, Texas. After playing some covers and original music at a Battle of the Bands competition, Friday Avenue realized that their true calling was to make music. Since then, the band has moved from the second place Battle of the Bands winner to performing throughout South Texas. The band consist of Lorenzo “Morris” Garcia (lead vocals/ guitar), David Marks (lead Guitar, Alex Navarro (bass/ vocals) and Omar Avitia (drums/vocals).

Within one year, the band released Friday Avenue EP produced by Adrian Loera and the band members. Just a year later, Friday Avenue debuted their first full-length album, Shallow Pockets, in July. The 10-track album includes the songs “Inoperable” and “Someone Here”, as well as longer tracks like “Yellow Plane”, “Midi Beat” and “Out Loud”. Keep and eye out for this up-an-coming band’s tour dates. - Austin Vida

It is always nice in music when a band is able to feed off each other, it makes the music purer and the sound more natural. This is exactly what you see with Friday Avenue.

The four-piece Alternative Rock band from Texas and their debut album ‘Shallow Pockets’ is yet another reminder of good music waiting to get its big break.
I generally liked the album, it is super catchy with a good sound and style and you feel compelled to listen to it, which is pleasure in itself. It actually contained a surprisingly huge amount of originality; you can feel certain influences within the music, but this band have made up their own personal style.The record will be sure to stir up a range of emotions in its listeners, from the upbeat nature ‘Inoperable’ to the sombreness of ‘Yellow Pane’, Friday Avenue have done a good job to explore the different sounds in music. This is just another reminder of the talent this band hold.

One major positive to the album was its length; too often you see bands that release a CD that is pushing more toward the EP side, but not these guys. My favourite thing of it all for me was the singer, obviously a singer is nothing without the music to go with it, but vocalist Lorenzo Garcia has that raspy whisky style voice that works so well with the rest of the band. For the songs themselves the best track had to be Beaureguard, the opening guitar was so simple but worked so well, and all the music mixes together to create something memorable with a JET feel about it.

Overall Shallow Pockets is a great album. It takes what is already good about Alternative Rock, changes it around a bit and comes out with something better. I would recommend giving it a listen, and I can see big things for this band.

Rating: 7/10 - Evident Noise

Good old rock guitar riffs rip through the room, whilst an edgy vocal is accompanied by driven drum and penetrating bass. The band play well together and give each other the room to do their thing, whilst working in coaptation.

They switch neatly between preppy rock and veering towards goth, whilst all the time maintaining a balance to the material that retains a core and recognizable sound. Playing around with tempos and delivery, permits the band to deliver something above the playing field which slips comfortably in to the ears.

As regular reads will know I don’t often remark on lead guitar as being the rising marker, not for any reason other than I am more focussed on the bass end of the spectrum, but with Friday Avenue a hat needs to be raised to great delivery from Dave. I would imagine it takes all the bands energy to ensure he doesn’t wander off on a 25 minute solo section, the compromise, they do let him have a little wander in many tracks, but it is held back and sits within the structure of the piece.

Vocally the strength lies in the harder pieces, though a sterling effort is made when required to pare back. As for the drum, well clean sharp and highly defined, which packs a power to Friday Avenue. The Bass lines are snappy and hold the material together and my speakers enjoy thumping to the beat resonating from the thick strings.

Having run round the individual players, the band works because it is a band – a case of one plus one times two equalling more than four.

I look forward to hearing more of Friday Avenue. - Indie Blog Bands