A 10-year anniversary is a time to reflect. In a relationship, it’s a chance to recount the first date; to remember the awkward pauses and the eventual connection. For musicians, a 10-year anniversary is a time to look back on their first album and see how far they’ve come from those earliest recordings. The new Album Leaf album “A Chorus of Storytellers,” marks the decade milestone for the group led by Jimmy Lavalle. In those 10 years, Lavalle went on from an initial improvised home A 10-year anniversary is a time to reflect. In a relationship, it’ss a chance to recount the first date; to remember the awkward pauses and the eventual connection. For musicians, a 10-year anniversary is a time to look back on their first album and see how far they’ve come from those earliest recordings. The new Album Leaf album A Chorus of Storytellers, marks the first decade for the group led by Jimmy LaValle. In those 10 years, LaValle has gone from initial improvised home recordings to now five complete studio albums, from opening slots to leading an incredible world-touring band to the stage at Red Rocks, headlining the Metamorphose festival in Japan and performing at the Hollywood Bowl with the Incredible String Band. LaValle’s well-earned reputation as a crafter of impeccable sonic imagery even led to a critically-acclaimed show at the Seattle International Film Festival where The Album Leaf performed a live score for the 1927 silent film Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans.
The Album Leaf’s debut, An Orchestrated Rise to Fall, was recorded by LaValle and a friend in his bedroom, and though it launched his ethereal dreamscape sound, the album recording quality is thin and rough. In contrast, A Chorus of Storytellers is the perfect showcase for LaValle’s skill as a recording artist. The album’s 11 tracks are crisp, clean, flowing and beautifully complex. That the completion of A Chorus of Storytellers coincides with the 10th birthday of the first Album Leaf album, over three years on from the release of the last album (the late-2006 release Into the Blue Again), can be chalked up to two unrelated, but important, events: LaValle’s wedding, and his conquering a bad case of writer’s block. “I took about a year off after everything was said and done with Into the Blue Again,” LaValle admits. “œIt was the longest period I’ve been inactive since I was 15 or 16 years old.” While he gives himself a pass for time spent on milestones in his personal life, LaValle feels guilt about his bout with writer’s block. Under pressure to create a divergent record that still carried The Album Leaf’s signature ambiance, LaValle grew frustrated, and the songs subsequently came to him very slowly. He wondered, “œHow do I stay fresh, realizing that The Album Leaf has been around for so long and that a lot of people wouldn’t give a new record a chance?” First, he had to cleanse his musical palate, recording and touring with indie rock supergroup Magnetic Morning, which includes Sam Fogarino from Interpol and Swervedriver’ss Adam Franklin. When he felt he had enough material, he returned to Bear Creek Studios in Woodinville, WA, the same studio where he created Into the Blue Again, to record.
