The Album Leaf is Jimmy LaValle; not his alter-ego really, but his ego. It is the music he makes. It isn't loud, has no guitar solos, no gut-wrenching sing-along choruses. And it isn't what you'd predict to be the stuff of teen pop drama soundtracks. But it is.
The stepping stones of LaValle's music career are of varied shapes and sizes. He has played guitar for Tristeza, where he discovered the beauty and virtue of instrumental music; he's toured with the morose-makers The Black Heart Procession; he got his punk-funk groove on in Gogogo Airheart; and he contributed to the world of angst and volume in The Locust. But back in the comfort of his own songwriting world, The Album Leaf is a respite of sorts.
The Album Leaf is about classical progressions and jazz tendencies; it’s about focusing on creating sounds more than merely songs. LaValle’s fourth full-length album, Into The Blue Again, released on Sub Pop Records, is ten tracks that unfold like scenes in a cross-country love story, with stops in undiscovered places along the way. That’s because LaValle's music is mostly instrumental, very much soundtrack-like, evoking visualization. Yet he admits no such visualization of his own when writing songs. Instead, his music is affected by his recent experiences and resulting moods. He leaves the visual interpretation to his "visualist," Andrew Pates, who helps create the atmosphere of The Album Leaf's live shows with videotape, lighting design, and other tricks of the trade. "We really just try to take over the whole room and the whole atmosphere of everything and turn it into our own, so people maybe forget where they are."
LaValle took six months to write the songs on his new LP, wanting to take pressure off himself to continue the success of the previous release, Into A Safe Place, from which songs appeared on several episodes and an LP for the popular teen drama The O.C. as well as on Showtime, CBS, and NBC.
“I got myself in the state of mind where I didn't feel like I had to make a record. I kind of wanted to just fall back into the naturalness, I guess." LaValle also wanted to combat “misrepresentations,� as he called them, about the previous record being written and recorded in large part by other people. "I found it really important to stay true to myself and to play everything myself, like I had on my last record; and in a way sticking up for myself in what the project actually is. And then, of course, I wanted to collaborate with people....and in the right way...which I did. I wanted to be comfortable and realistic about the new record, and make it the way that I wanted to make it."
In keeping with the integrity of The Album Leaf and this record, LaValle wanted to use his own equipment. So he loaded up his van and drove to Bear Creek Studio outside Seattle, to track with Ryan Hadlock in the studio's turn-of-the-century barn. From there it was back to Iceland (where most of the previous LP was recorded) to mix with his friend Brigir Jon "Biggi" Birgisson at Sigur Ros' Sundlaugin studio. These settings, combined with LaValle's sculptural approach to songwriting, produced a beautiful record of organic and electronic textures, and one-note concentrations. Each song is like a black and white photograph of some pastoral, wide-open space, allowing the listener to fill in colors with his/her own imagination.
The licensing success LaValle has experienced, especially with the last record, has been a love/hate experience for him. He has found success through a dedicated DIY ethic; yet with the mystique of the underground comes an aversion to all things corporate. He got the most flack from the use of an earlier song, "Vermillion," which appeared in a Hummer commercial. "There comes a point where the cost of living is more, and it kind of forces you into those situations," LaValle explained. "And people hate you for it or have their opinion, but they don't know the position I'm in, they don't know the kind of rent I have to pay . . . I don't think people realize, too, that those kind of things bought my van and trailer so I can go out and tour, and I now own stuff that won't break onstage! So when you're watching the show, it can go flawlessly instead of, 'Oh shit, the keyboard's broken, sorry, can't play the song!'"
Penelope Biver
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The Album Leaf's album Into the Blue Again is out September 12, 2006 on Sub Pop Records.
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