Jimmy Lavalle of The Album Leaf is looking forward to some Irish weather, shock horror, as he prepares for a three-date tour of the country this week, which will take in Cork, Dublin and Galway.
He’s in California at the time of talking, playing a few dates there in conjunction with the release of the band’s new single, New Soul, and in anticipation of the release of their newest album ‘Between Waves.’
“Right now it’s like 72 degrees, it’s pretty boring. I prefer some weather myself. I’m looking forward to the trip for that reason alone.”
In the time intervening since his last outing with The Album Leaf, LaValle has been busy. He’s worked on soundtracks and scores, released an EP, ‘Forward/Return,’ under The Album Leaf moniker and also released ‘Perils From the Sea’ in collaboration with one of the most talked about musicians of the moment, Mark Kozelek of Sun Kil Moon.
Their coming together was like one of those simple twists of fate, it had the right feeling about it and LaValle says that the outcome was something that both men were very happy with.
“It was great, definitely an interesting scenario, just the two of us. We both realised that I’m the captain of my ship and he’s the captain of his ship, and it was bringing two captains together so we could bust a lot of heads, and we definitely experienced that.”
LaValle has nothing but good things to say about Kozelek, but he also feels the need to add that “Obviously he’s been in the press a lot lately for his own antics. And I mean it’s true, that’s the kind of dude he is, and he’s not going to hide it.”
And since that last The Album Leaf record he’s been privy to the variegating scale of attention given to certain projects. With that being the case, he was able to get a clearer view of how the press machine behind the music industry works.
“For New Soul it was a small publicity push, but people wanna write about the album, they’re not going to write about this, they’re going to wait and write about that. It’s such a saturated market now, it’s a great thing at the same time, but sticking out of that is hard.”
The Album Leaf seem to have developed a signature style over the years. They're often touted as being a modern take on the post-rock genre, or an ambient outfit cut in the same vein as a band like Mogwai, but these categorisations often do nothing to really signify the spectral beauty of what The Album Leaf have created throughout the past two decades.
“For some reason the post rock genre, it’s something I’ve never seen, I don’t connect with that style of music for me anyhow. I’ve seen things written like nostalgia post rock, so it seems like every style of music after twenty years becomes popular. Maybe that’s bound to happen again.”
And on first impression the new album is a rather large step into the unknown as far as The Album Leaf are concerned. On New Soul there are signs of a wide divergence from what went before, with LaValle attesting to this fact with plenty of zeal.
“I’ve been doing The Album Leaf for almost twenty years, and if I keep doing the same thing it’s not gonna be much of a progression. So I try to mix things up a little bit. I try to approach things in a different way. All sorts of things change, location changes, circumstances change. That’s only one of two songs that has the real piano from other records, which has kind of been my staple sound so…”
Despite making solidly beautiful and impressionistic (mind the contradiction in that) music for almost twenty years now, The Album Leaf still has the propensity to fly somewhat under the radar. Perhaps it’s because, unlike traditional lyrically driven music, the things explored become very abstract and interpretive under LaValle’s astute guidance.
“I feel like no matter what I can’t get away from my sound, no matter how much I change it up I can’t get away from that, it’s kind of like the cohesive part of it or something. I wouldn’t say that it’s really personal as far as having a deep tortured something goes.”
From that you get the sense that his creative process is not so much an arduous, drawn out battle with emotions and ideas as it is the compulsion to get something done. As is often the case, it’s as simple as sitting down and starting with one clean, defined thought.
“I wake up and go down to my studio and whatever happens happens, y’know. I go down and try to be productive and try to create, and something usually sparks.”
The Album Leaf play The Workman’s Club in Dublin on the 18th, Roisin Dubh in Galway on the 19th and Cyprus Avenue in Cork on the 20th of November.