The Album Leaf
In the nebulous field of music journalism, there always seems to be one nagging descriptor that won’t go away. Currently, the adjective plaguing the blogosphere is “dreamy.” Still, it’s somewhat apt, I guess: Everything these days, it seems, is awash in overlapping layers of sound and synths, waterlogged with reverb, lazy-hazy—and usually, stubbornly inconsequential.
Don’t blame the progenitors. Both Tycho (Scott Hansen) and The Album Leaf (Jimmy LaValle) were dreaming dreamy dreams before today’s crop of musical dreamers were even half-asleep. Their music, and that of their contemporaries, continues to provide the blueprint for many a Best New Music choice: Beach House, Washed Out, Youth Lagoon and scores of other indistinct acts with water-themed names.
Not quite chilly enough for the IDM (EDM?) scene and too beat-heavy for indie-pop, Hansen exists on some somnambulistic middle plane. Debuting in 2002 with The Science of Patterns EP, Tycho’s music, where bendy Boards of Canada-biting synths mingle with sleepy 4/4 fantasy, is the soft but persistent sound of an all-night rave after most of the flies have dropped.
LaValle’s work, whether he’s flying solo or backed by his band, is more indebted to the instrumental post-rock of bands like Mogwai, though his is a gentler sort of bombast, the type of stuff you might expect to hear soundtracking a gritty indie drama. (Fittingly, The Album Leaf’s latest release is an excellent, heart-wrenching score for Torey’s Distraction, a documentary about children suffering from the pain and shame of disfiguring craniofacial anomalies.)
Epic in scope yet tender in nature, both Tycho’s rhythmic evocations of daybreak and The Album Leaf’s warm, melodic meanderings are rich with the sort of instrumental inner-monologuing that encourages listeners to explore and embrace the intricacy of the subconscious. You know, really dreamy stuff.
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