The Album Leaf
A Chorus of Storytellers
Rating: 2.5/5.0
Label: Sub Pop
Though the latest release from the Album Leaf, A Chorus of Storytellers, is its first recorded live with a full band, its cover features principle musician and songwriter Jimmy LaValle standing alone by the waterside. As far as recordings go, it’s how he’s spent the bulk of his career: alone, layering organic instruments over an electronic base or vice versa, resulting in a lively form of ambiance.
The Album Leaf has been primarily an instrumental vehicle, but the construction of the songs themselves are slightly disappointing after this album was billed by Sub Pop as a return to songwriting for LaValle after a lengthy bout of writer’s block, a record with “a lot of storytelling behind it.” By deciding to sing on only four of the album’s 11 songs, not much of a story is told; the lyrics present are as dull and abstract as the music sometimes is, basically coming off as a whole slew of nature/relationship metaphors. Verses like “Under the night sky, the twilight/ We find ourselves here again/ Breaking out of standstill/ We are drifting from the shore/ We are caught up in the landslide,” in “We Are” don’t quite seem like the result of three years of songwriting.
Much of the album seems to be concerned with movement, as evidenced by song titles like “There is a Wind,” “Falling From the Sun,” “Stand Still” and “Almost There.” The album has a seamless flow, only slightly changing speed or mood, and even more so than in LaValle’s past works, the songs feel transitional, moving the story from one scene to another. He himself has dealt with transition since his last release; he tied the knot with his longtime sweetheart and, more relevantly, decided to bring the four extra musicians along for the recording of Storytellers.
Upon repeated spins, intricacies start to rise through the dreamy fog of layered pianos, strings and drum tracks, but they are likely to grab only the most discerning of listeners. LaValle, the self-proclaimed “bandleader” of these sessions, clearly has the musical chops to reach beyond the visceral level, but he chooses to keep things subtle. Highlights come when his scale grows grander, as in “Until the Last,” where horns, strings and authentic drums (courtesy of Timothy Reece) fill out LaValle’s cinematic visions exquisitely. On the flip side, some of the album’s most beautiful moments come in its smallest; “Tied Knots,” with its slide guitar, bells and retro organ brings to mind the best of Beach House. The problem comes when LaValle decides to go somewhere in between in terms of tempo and arrangement.
One of the most challenging things for established recent post-rock acts like Sigur Ros, Explosions in the Sky and the Album Leaf to do is mix the cold (electronic elements, white noise, synthesizers) with the warm (strings, guitars, bells) in their own unique way. And while they take cues from both of the aforementioned acts, particularly in “Perro,” beginning almost exactly the same as ( )’s opener, LaValle and his storytellers have their musical temperature figured out. There just isn’t anything particularly clever about it. The glitchy electronic drum tracks that pop up on tracks like “Blank Pages” sound a decade outdated, the clean arpeggiated guitar lines are something of a cliché within the genre at this point, and the quiet-loud-quiet sections can be heard coming from a mile away. One would hope that the next time the Album Leaf takes three years off between albums to focus on songwriting, the result contains a more substantial story.
by Kyle Wall
