ZEE AVI s/t (Brushfire/Monotone)

So how come all the singer-songwriters/youtube phenoms that get discovered are girls? Has it got something to do with instant visual appeal contrasted to sonic attraction? Can’t truly say. Malaysian singer-songwriter is yet another youtube phenom who gets signed by foreign recording company (in this case, Brushfire Records, partly owned by Jack Johnson, a singer-songwriter in his right) and trust into the unforgiving world of the modern music scene.

Listening to Zee Avi, there is no way on earth you could remotely tell that she was Asian, this is compounded by the fact that her face is never shown on the sleeve of her debut eponymous album. So what’s going on? Her music – a blend of old world rustic country-folk and current folk-pop flavours – never betrays her Asian roots (with the great exception of Kantoi, which features her native Malay language). These are not criticisms mind you but merely observations and equally applicable to many Asian musicians who adopt Western pop styles effortlessly.

And that’s my main problem with Zee Avi and her first musical venture, there’s just no force of personality evident from her music. They just brilliant facsimiles of the sum of her influences, I guess. Which may not be a bad thing and she pulls it off magnificiently but somehow it all leaves me a tad cold. Hopefully, now that she’s got her toes wet, she’ll be able to take the plunge and reveal the “real” Zee Avi on her next record.

Check out Zee Avi’s Myspace page.