Review of Quit your Unnatural Ways, Weird Forest, 2012
“My name is AVA MENDOZA. I play guitars and stompboxes and write music. Currently I’m based out of Brooklyn, NY. I have played guitar for most of my life and been active for the last decade playing my own music and in many different groups. In any context I try to bring expressivity, energy and a wide sonic range to the music I play. “ http://avamendozamusic.com/bio.html
I thinks that these few lines of presentation of Ava Mendoza would work as a perfect review for this record, or rather of her project Unnatural Ways, high-voltage musical duo formed along with drummer Nick Tamburro that I had the pleasure to appreciate in their Quit your Unnatural Ways . · I had already liked Ava Mendoza’s guitar in the first track she recorded in I Never Meta Guitar too, called, if I remember correctly, Mandible Moonwalk.
Ava Mendoza can certainly define herself as an electric guitar’s virtuoso, a virtuoso with a remarkable sense of humor who knows how to draw from different sources (jazz, avant, rock, blues) managing with great balance distorted sounds, delays and loop effects without loosing herlself into emptyness and uploading it all with a great deal of energy, aggression and sincerity.
Nick Tamburro is not far behind, proving an ideal travel companion providing always precise, reliable and flexible rhythmic for a guitar launched at full speed ready to stratify, multiply itself. Let’s hope that they will continue along this way: this record is a truly force of nature.
NeuGuitars 