A Chorus of Storytellers
The Album Leaf
Score:40
Reviewer: Dan Osmolowski
Label: Sub Pop (USA), Stomp (Australia)
Reviewed: Mar 1st '10, Released:2010
In film theory and criticism, the principle of diegesis is one which is integral to understanding how a film connects with its audience. Essentially, it describes the authenticity of the internal world that the film’s narrative creates for its characters. Talk of the ‘diegetic effect’ relates to how well the audience suspends disbelief, and the ability of the filmmaker to draw them into the existence of their characters.
When applied to music, it goes without saying that the intention of all musicians is to achieve this diegetic effect. Recording as The Album Leaf, American Jimmy LaValle attempts to craft this inner world through melancholic strings, plaintive guitar and reflective piano. Throughout A Chorus of Storytellers he balances this, in the main, with popping and hissing electronic beats that underpin the aforementioned more organic and traditional elements in an odd, often awkward manner. This remnant of The Album Leaf’s origins as a bedroom project seem on this, full-length release number five, a badly dated leftover of a past when experimental accidents led to more fully realised collaborations with The Black Heart Procession, American Analog Set and Sigur Ros, no less.
It seems odd then, on the first of his albums recorded with a full band, that LaValle utilises live drums on only a few tracks. Where he does (‘There is a Wind’, ‘Stand Still’, ‘We Are’ and ‘Almost There’) he marries all but one with vocals and the results are clearly the most engaging and evocative that the album has to offer. That the vocals are more to the forefront than anywhere else in his back catalogue also helps, the fact that they sound uncannily like glitchy compatriots, Hood, is also in LaValle’s favour. Elsewhere, the album resembles more of a first draft of a high school student’s short story than A Chorus of Storytellers.
Where they attempt to overtly wrestle emotional response (‘Until The Last’ and ‘Tied Knots’) the results are laboured, unnecessarily busy in their composition and, in the case of the former, often bordering on bombast. There is the smack of ‘I’ve heard all of this before’ on tracks like ‘Within Dreams’ and ‘Summer Fog’ where the aching strings resemble post-rock paint-by-numbers. Perhaps the biggest issue with A Chorus of Storytellers is that at any time you can walk away from the album and come back without having felt that you have missed anything. LaValle and co keep you at an arm’s length throughout, never fully letting you immerse yourself in that inner world that musicians like The Album Leaf so obviously value yet fail to fully exhibit.
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