"A gypsy woman said to me, 'You're a wolf, boy, get out of this town,'" Alex Brown Church sings on "You're a Wolf", a track that appeared earlier this year on Sea Wolf's debut EP, Get to the River Before It Runs Too Low, and has been resurrected for the band's debut full-length, Leaves in the River. Trouble is, I didn't believe him then, and I don't believe him now. Church, who is Sea Wolf's only permanent member, is certainly no wolf: There's no snarling on his highly civilized songs, no aggression, no animal conflict, nor any menace at all. Instead, Brown might be better characterized as a sheep, as his songs closely follow Elliott Smith, Death Cab for Cutie, and the Shins.
Sea Wolf hails from Silver Lake, a Los Angeles neighborhood that might be best described as Williamsburg West, as it maintains a bustling scene of indie bands and hipster denizens. Earlimart's early albums of shiny, sturdy indie pop set the mold and have inspired groups like Silversun Pickups, Rooney, Giant Drag, Irving (Church's former band), and now Sea Wolf, which takes its name from the Jack London novel. But where Earlimart and some other progenitors focus on sonics first and songs a close second, Sea Wolf is primarily a songwriter's project. Leaves in the River was produced by Phil Ek of Modest Mouse, Built to Spill, and Shins fame, and he gives the album a light autumnal mood to fit the lyrics. The album begins with the sound of rain, a two-note guitar theme that sounds like a train-crossing signal, and a rising, buzzing ambience. This is not a song, though, just an overture. Once it dies away, the title track begins, and Church describes a Halloween evening walk to a house that's haunted by ghosts of a sad childhood. If he were really a wolf, the story would have been a lot more interesting.
Leaves in the River is overburdened with this kind of clunkily conceptual songwriting, especially on "Middle Distance Runner", which never sells its central metaphor that love is a track meet. Church fares better on "Winter Windows" and "The Cold, the Dark & the Silence" (despite that overreaching title), but if he's going to resurrect songs from the EP, he might have chosen "I Made a Resolution", which shows he's capable of tweaking his own despairing music with humor and playfulness. Also, that song has some genuine motion, whereas the album tracks sound weighed down with too many un-wolflike intentions. Even the more upbeat songs like "Black Dirt", "You're a Wolf", and "Song for the Dead" never quite percolate, but instead sound mired in the mud of that initial rainfall. Church sounds a little more comfortable on quieter, slower songs like "The Rose Captain" and "Black Leaf Falls", with its army of shakers. Mopiness may be Church's endgame, but there's so little gravity on this record it's a wonder the leaves fall into the river at all.
