Album Review: The Album Leaf, Breaking Waves

Allow the four band members to be the four chambers of your heart. Sense the throbbing bass and drums fused with synths and vocals. I just returned from a cinematic journey.

Breaking Waves shatters The Album Leaf’s six-year silence and conveys greater group dynamic this time around. Evident in ‘Wandering Still’ are layers of a Rhodes piano, synth, and guitar deliciously balanced to give a breather among an otherwise foreboding, moody start to the album.

The eight tracks flow like waves and I hardly notice the shift in tides – until quiet vocals emerge on the third track ‘New Soul.’ Jimmy LaVelle and Matthew Resovich speak in subtle poetry. Just as I am zoned out in the dreamy atmosphere “There, beyond the sun I wait/ Here, inside your life, I stay” softly draws me back to the experience. Perhaps LaVelle’s film score background explains why on my fifth listen I feel like I travelled over clouds and miles more under the sea – soaking up tranquility between waves.

‘Lost in the Fog’ truly stands out as emotion-charged journey, as if an album in itself. From bright beats in the beginning to a surge in strings, the song is reminiscent of the uplifting 2010 album A Chorus of Storytellers.

Despite an unsettling start, listeners will feel safe and sound by the end. The Album Leaf delivers us to shore, retreating with the final sentiment “Inside, we let go, our love grows.”

Listen to full album below.