Zee Avi uses very few ingredients to cook her food, but she chooses her flavors carefully. Sometimes it’s ukelele and words. Often, it’s just her guitar and her warm, unaffected voice. For rhythm, it’s brushes on a snare, and that’s about it.
Avi’s is a story of overnight success, and it shows the upside of quick discovery: she made it to our ears before anyone got in the way and encouraged her to sully the stew by adding more instruments. Growing up in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, young Izyan Alirahman listened to music from the 1920s, and the straightforward, unadorned lyricism of those songs appealed to her. At that time, her aspirations were in the fashion world, so she moved to London and pursued a design degree.
Avi passed through listening phases, at times enjoying British indie pop, dance music, and hard rock, but kept returning to that older music’s honesty and simplicity. After falling out of love with the fashion world, she returned to Malaysia and began songwriting. First up was “Poppy,” a beautiful and vivid song about heroin addiction. The night after her first public performance as a singer, she flipped on her webcam and strapped on a call-center headset to record “Poppy,” intending to share it with a writer friend for feedback.
That recording was not intended as a star-making vehicle, but the editors at YouTube found this home recording and featured it on the site’s front page. The next day, admirers and record company reps started flooding her inbox. Soon thereafter, she changed her stage name to Zee Avi and went out on tour opening for Pete Yorn. The 23-year-old played at the Outside Lands Festival this past summer, and her new Bay Area fans have been awaiting her return ever since.
