When you’re a teenager with even the slightest bit of differentness about you, surviving adolescence is no simple feat. Try doing it in a town like Richmond, Virginia, a.k.a. the former capital of the Confederacy. Let’s just say it’s easy to resent the obvious ass-backwardness of a city that, not too long ago, celebrated Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee’s birthdays on the same day as Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s. You need a thick skin, a well-developed sense of irony, and a community of similarly-minded weirdos for protection. And you need a band like Avail to write loud-as-fuck, catchy-as-hell anthems to serve as the rallying cry for your misspent youth.
I was a teenage weirdo, and believe me when I say that I wore out my cassette of 4AM Friday before I even reached college. Sure, the songs found on the album don’t stray too far from standard (albeit not textbook by any means) melodic hardcore that was so popular at the time. But 4AM Friday is so much fun, so perfect an encapsulation of what it meant to grow up strange in a small Southern city in the 90s that it’s hard to deny.
In case you weren’t there or need a refresher course: you got caught up in the circle pit while the band sang the anti-fight song, "Nameless." You belted along with your friends on the anti-conformity track, "Order." When Tim Barry sang about never compromising or changing to fit in on "Simple Song," you got it, you felt it, and connected to it in the way only teenage weirdos can connect to songs. But when they threw in that jarringly traditional cover of "Swing Low"? Well, in a weird way, you kind of connected to that, too. Sure, it all sounds a little contradictory and confusing. But that’s puberty, in any city.
And that’s the thing about Avail. As much as they wrote songs that pointed out the flaws in the world around them, they also had a strange way of making you proud to be a part of it. And the best part? In spite of the fact that 4AM Friday is littered with inside-baseball-style references to Monroe Park and three-strike laws, it actually struck a chord with a few people outside of Dixie, too. Because North or South, teenage or ten years removed and steeped in nostalgia, the fact remains -- everyone needs something to sing along to once in a while.
1. Simple Song
2. Order
3. Tuesday
4. 92
5. McCarthy
6. (Ben)
7. Monroe Park
8. Armchair
9. Fix
10. Blue Ridge
11. Swing Low
12. F.C.A
13. Hang
14. Governor
15. Nameless
