Jimmy LaValle's career as the Album Leaf took off when he started opening for Sigur Rós (Jonsi produced prior albums), and since then, he's been offering a lower-stakes, more intimate take on what they've sort of perfected: a twinkling poptronica that could be arguably cast aside as new age if it weren't cut with just enough post-rock and IDM textures. It's a nice niche, but one where the floor and the ceiling can be a little too close for comfort: Over the span of four albums, collaborations, and EPs, you've come in knowing what to expect and then got just that. It's not a sound that takes a lot of risks, and thus, trying to figure out what constitutes great Album Leaf and merely more Album Leaf is splitting some incredibly thin hairs.
Sure, most of Chorus is pretty, but it's only that: Between the glistening guitars, cymbal washes, sighing strings, and electric piano, the beauty LaValle conjures is effortless but ultimately less impressive for not having any sort of contrast. "Summer Fog" and "Blank Pages" swell and contract with lava-lamp hypnosis, but offer little in the way of resolution. The disembodied children's voices on "Perro" and mulched-up drum filtering of "Within Dreams" can give you a quick Boards of Canada fix, but you mostly wish it was undercut by some kind of Geogaddi menace.
In complete defiance of its title, what's noticeably missing are choruses, stories, and people telling them. It's about the same ratio of vocals/instruments as albums past, but they're less frontloaded in the sequencing. As far as curveballs, you have to take what you can get. The Dave Fridmann-styled drums of "Stand Still" brush up against a guitar figure reminiscent of Jimmy Eat World's "Polaris", but it builds with the grace and fluidity of Explosions in the Sky to Chorus' most enthralling climax. "Until the Last" is the most interesting composition here, not so much due to texture as that it's written in 5/4. With its booming low-end and trash-can drum kit, "We Are" is the closest thing the Album Leaf have done to typical power-trio rock, but as rock music goes, it doesn't do much to display LaValle as an underutilized melodicist.
So I guess the question becomes whether you're willing to accept A Chorus of Storytellers on its own terms-- the Album Leaf should never have to apologize for not rocking enough. LaValle never asks too much of the listener, and if you're into that sort of thing, Chorus is a fine entry into their already fine catalog.
