November 24, 2003 - Seal Beach

Three days after my last release and two and a half years since "One Day I'll Be On Time", The Album Leaf released their second EP "Seal Beach" on November 24, 2003. Jimmy LaValle is still playing the same style of post-rock and after a long break we get another EP. Let's check out the latest from The Album Leaf!

The EP begins with "Malmo" and it fades in quietly before a lead piano riff takes over. LaValle's piano is slow but pretty space-y and cool and it's backed by some electronic drums, which are usually not my favourite, but they actually sound decently catchy here. As the song flows on the drums get faster and more involved with more weird percussion noises and this all sounds pretty cool as LaValle continues to lead the way on piano. Things slow down after a couple minutes as an echo-y new keyboard riff takes the lead, with the piano still going in the background and this adds an extra trippy element to things before the drums return to their fast complexity. There's a lot going on at this point but Jimmy blends it all beautifully into a pretty cool post-rock opener. Up next is "Brennivin" and LaValle plays some droning keyboards to start us off, then adds some light, almost wispy other keyboards to the mix as the music really makes you feel like you might be sitting on a beach, feeling the breeze and hearing the waves. The drums start off electronic with another pretty cool beat, but at some points it sounds like a real kit with a simple but solid beat. LaValle adds more keyboards to the mix with some more soft and cool piano and some strings-esque keyboards that sound like an echo-y violin. He nicely jams out all these parts for a few minutes, then most of it falls away, leaving the strings-style keyboards to close out the final minute. It's certainly a good song for it's style even if it's very light and fluffy. Track 3 is the title track "Seal Beach" and once again we start off with the fuzzy, slightly distorted and trippy keyboards until LaValle adds some low piano to the mix. A third piano riff joins in that is pretty cool and it takes the lead as they lightly float their way through this drumless song. The final minute has some epic strings-like stuff as everything else slowly fades away and like the last song, I'm not nominating this for song of the year or anything, but it achieved it's goal pretty perfectly. The next track is called "For Jonathan" and it has some long, droning keyboards for a while before LaValle starts a very slow piano riff overtop. After a couple minutes a simple electronic drum beat kicks in and this one adds nothing and isn't interesting at all. This is easily the most repetitive and worst song on the EP for me. The final song on the EP is "One Minute" (it's actually closer to five minutes) and for the first time on this EP I believe we hear LaValle play some guitar! It's been all keyboards and electronics so far, but this acoustic guitar riff is very refreshing and cool. It's decently fast and is a great way to keep the pace as LaValle adds some rhythm guitar as well to make things even more interesting! Things continue like this for the whole song pretty much and while it's a tad repetitive by the end it's largely a decent little tune.

That is the end of "Seal Beach" and I thought it was a solid little EP from The Album Leaf. It obviously doesn't measure up to the studio albums, but I like it better than their first EP "In An Off White Room". It was good at what it was: a soft, trippy and cool instrumental EP. Where will Jimmy go from here?

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