Composer/multi-instrumentalist James LaValle has certainly generated his fair sum of impeccable music-- both in collaboration with sympathetic acts like Sigur Rós or the Black Heart Procession and as author of his ongoing project the Album Leaf. Past works like 2004's In a Safe Place or last year's Seal Beach EP have shown LaValle able to patiently craft sonorous ambient crescendos with the best of them, yet at some point even the most fastidious listeners have to be anxious to see him get his clothes a little rumpled. Unfortunately, however, on LaValle's latest release, Into the Blue Again, the operative word is "Again". Here he takes the Album Leaf on a romantic tour of all the familiar post-rock haunts, guiding the listener though another tranquil series of shivery watercolor instrumentals and hand-carved melodic scrimshaw, the music's gentle restraint quickly blurring into a needlessly restrictive caution.
LaValle recorded the basic tracks for Into the Blue Again at Bear Creek Studio in Washington, and then took the album to Iceland to be mixed under the watchful eye of Brigir Birgisson, the engineer at Sigur Rós' Sundlaugin studio. The Black Heart Procession's Pall Jenkins chips in with lyrics and vocals on a few tracks, while guests like violinist Matthew Resovich make brief but crucial cameos. For the most part however, LaValle handles the instrumental duties himself, building these pieces upon a reliable foundation of Rhodes piano, unobtrusive electronics, and a polite mix of acoustic and programmed drumming. Perhaps as a consequence of LaValle's increased self-reliance, much of Into the Blue Again has an air of stifled insularity, with many of his admittedly gorgeous melodies pressed nearly lifeless beneath the fingerprints of the album's antiseptic, fussed-over construction.
Several of the songs on In a Safe Place had a fruitful second life as background fodder on television soundtracks, and it's not much of a stretch to imagine several performances on Into the Blue Again enjoying a similar fate. On vocal numbers such as the lovely "Always For You", Pall Jenkins' lyrics have been trimmed down to their romantic essentials, stripped of all personal effects and identifying features. "All these things we tried to change/ Were never easy to contain/ It was always meant for you," sings LaValle with exquisite, nonspecific ardor-- the song's potential dramatic utility only as limited as the screenwriter's imagination. Likewise, "Writing on the Wall" and "Wherever I Go" flawlessly hit their marks, matching LaValle's wistful pop melodicism with gracefully billowing strings and crisp, snappy drumwork.
Despite the Album Leaf's studied textures and buoyant songcraft, there is a crippling lack of tension inherent within Into the Blue Again's careful constructions. Instrumental pieces like the opening groundswell "The Light" or the rippling "Red-Eye" can be temporarily breathtaking, but ultimately feel confined by the self-imposed limits LaValle has placed on this material. Every sonic detail is gradually unspooled with such predictable and scrupulous precision that the listener can rest assured that nothing jarring or dissonant might ever be allowed to cast a ripple across the music's placid surfaces. And until LaValle proves willing to expose his compositions to more alien and/or volatile elements, the Album Leaf will have to content itself to a tasteful but restrained hothouse existence.
