POSTED: Monday, May 3, 2010, 8:09 PM
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| Photo | John Vettese |
We all are pushing and pulling.
You've heard
The Album Leaf. You just don't realize it. Over the past decade,
Jimmy LaVelle's sensual stitchings of whispery keyboards and static-pop beats
has brought the serenity to documentary films, television showsand Hummer ads. Let us restate that —
dude's music made a Hummer seem serene. That's a licensing coup.
As his sounds took root in the background our workaday lives, LaVelle steadily built his operation from the one-man show that made 2001's largely ambient
One Day I'll Be On Time to the energetic 10-piece ensemble we saw on the alter of the First Unitarian Sanctuary last night.
The band's 90-minute set opened with first half of its latest release,
A Chorus of Storytellers. On record, these songs are noticeable more forceful than Album Leaf of yore; in performance, they become further amplified with booming basslines, crackling samples ("
Within Dreams") and slamming drumbeats. "
Stand Still" moved like a buzzsaw, backed by frenetic projections of city streets and facial abstractions. Even the IDM fireworks of "
Twentytwofourteen" (from 2004's
In A Safe Place) felt full of life, emphasized by an instrumental cutaway to the organic tones of a Boston string quartet that joined the band for a stretch of the tour.
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| Photo | John Vettese |
By mid-set, the band reverted to its old ways, drifting off to its own pretty tones with closed, languid eyes, swaying into somnolence, and losing the momentum of the show's opening. During "
The Outer Banks," fans of opening act
Sea Wolf began to make haste down the aisle towards the exit. Some songs also just didn't translate live; no amount of instrumental prowess could mask the fact that "
Shine," from 2006's
Into the Blue Again, was little more than several measures of unvarying notes, on loop.
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| Photo | John Vettese |
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| Photo | John Vettese |
But they rebounded. Closing the main set with "
Wherever I Go," The Album Leaf brought a fervent pulse to the studio version (also heard on
Blue); it shook out nicely as a distant cousin of "
Enjoy the Silence." And the encore of "Red Eye" rumbled and rattled in a dense sprawl. You would never confuse the clamourous sounds of this ensemble with the
Seal Beach EP that was your bedtime music for years. (
No? Well, it was mine anyway.) But you'd know in the back of your mind that it was all the product of the same ubiquitous composer.
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| Photo | John Vettese |
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| Photo | John Vettese |
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| Photo | John Vettese |
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| Photo | John Vettese |
