1) Leaves in the River; 2) Winter Windows; 3) Black Dirt; 4) The Rose Captain; 5) Middle Distance Runner; 6) You’re a Wolf; 7) Song for the Dead; 8) Black Leaf Falls; 9) The Cold, the Dark & the Silence; 10) Neutral Ground
More cosy and comfortable singer/songwriter indie rocking, effectively an extension of the preceding EP. But maybe more isn't better in this case.
Key tracks: "Winter Windows", "You're a Wolf", "The Cold, the Dark & the Silence"
I have a soft spot for indie singer/songwriters and over the course of time I’ve heard a lot of them: my period of exponential musical growth happened to coincide with when it started getting easy for any musician to publish their music over the internet, and I’ve ended up gravitating towards a lot of guitars (often acoustic) plucking moody melodies. Some have become collection mainstays, countless others have faded back away as quickly as they appeared in the first place. Despite how I still have the actual physical CD, Alex Brown Church’s Sea Wolf outfit is much more closely aligned with the latter than it is with the former. Leaves in the River sounds instantly familiar, but it’s because it’s been recorded under countless different names by hundreds of artists and Church hasn’t really found his own voice - as a songwriter, lyricist or literally.
He can write a good melody though. He’s generally a decent songwriter who goes through his soft indie folk in an enjoyable manner that makes for good background music, but now and then he busts out a song that shows he’s capable of much more as well. On Leaves in the River they’re “Winter Windows” and “The Cold, the Dark & the Silence” in particular, as they do what very little else on the album does and command attention as they grip with their hooks and entice with their decidedly different sounds compared to the rest of the album: the former stars organs and keyboards and sports a whimsical rhythm worlds away from the rest of the album, while the latter is carried by a steady processed beat and a jangly guitar. They both also push out a different, more evocative kind of charisma from the normally a bit too calm and collected Church. “You’re a Wolf”, the cello-accentuated, quickly-paced highlight of the pre-album EP Get to the River Before It Runs Too Low finds its second home here in a completely unchanged form and becomes the album’s heart and centre point. All three jump and stand out from the general peaceful lull of the rest of the album: one where pretty but nondescript melodies are gently picked under a smooth vocal. It makes for nice rainy day listening but falls short of grasping any personal hold.
This wasn’t really an issue on the aforementioned Get to the River Before It Runs Too Low EP because its brief length and the resulting focus didn’t allow it to crop up. The album is more of the same that the EP offered in sound and style, just with a little more polish in production which you can notice, but can’t say if it’s for better or worse. On paper that sounds like a winning formula, but in full length format the relative ‘ordinariness’ Sea Wolf slips into is accentuated. You can’t really criticise the album – or Church for that matter – for it, but it makes it hard to squeeze any great detail out of it either.
Leaves in the River has an earnestness and warmth to it that arguably makes it the best one out of the Sea Wolf full-lengths, so it has that going on for it. Considering it’s a pleasant listen, damning it with faint praise feels mean – unfortunately, it’s just not gripping enough to have ever elevated into anything more over the years.
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