Albums by this artist

One Day I'll Be On Time (2001)

An Orchestral Rise To Fall (2000)

The Album Leaf

One Day I'll Be On Time

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» JEN APPEL | STAFF WRITER

The Album Leaf One Day I'll Be On Time Tiger Style, 2001 RiYL: Tristeza, The Mercury Program

I have always scoffed at the $3.99 "soothing sounds" CDs that are available at the front counter of virtually every local Walgreens. I listen to music because it transports me to the unreal, some where definitely not of nature. Sure, the sounds of birds squawking overhead in the parkor waves hitting the shore at the beach are comforting and placid, but those are best enjoyed in their natural elements without human beings recording them for distribution. Rock and roll, however...well, that's something else. People make rock.

The most recent effort by the Album Leaf (aka Jimmy Lavelle of Tristeza), One Day I'll Be on Time, layers electric and acoustic guitars and pianos to create a compelling hybrid of nature and rock. It's much like those great old Jacques Cousteau underwater specials, in which Cousteau and his team would explore the sea by making use of man-made equipment. Lavelle's latest batch of vocal-less soundscapes are a worthy soundtrack to an underwater exploration film classic.

The three-note bass line that opens "The MP" is the steady upbeat force that repeats throughout the song, as the listener sonically follows the ship out to the deep blue waters of the sea. Sunshine and waves -- in the form of tinkering piano lines and acoustic guitar strumming -- rush against the boat as it chugs along, driven by a high hat-heavy beat. It's a warm and glorious day on the boat and finally, it reaches its destination and slows.

This pretty, minimalist instrumentation continues throughout the rest of the album. On the aptly titled "Wet The Day," Lavelle takes us below the surface of the sea. In the midst of a trance-like synthesizer drone, and a repeated legato vibraphone, one can actually picture a scuba diver slowly fluttering through the water, passing his hand atop some brightly colored tropical fish.

But the lugubrious underwater pensiveness speeds up on "The Audio Pool" which, with its upbeat and allegro-paced drum beat and tinkling percussion, sounds as though the diver has grabbed hold of an underwaterjet and is speeding alongside a dolphin. The flute-like synth sounds reverberate eerily like dolphin vocalizations as they expand and extend against eighth notes on the vibraphone.

One Day I'll Be On Time can be heard as a simple and pretty story arc of sound. Even a less straightforward progression like "In Between Lines," in which layers of guitars twist and turn on the edge of holding together, proves to be an effective sonic bridge between the world below the surface and the one above it. And back on the boat, Jimmy Lavelle introduces more manufactured, less natural sounds, like the grating metal string rub that snores through "Asleep" and the crackling static that opens "The Sailor."

The Album Leaf succeeds in shaping a sonic story by blending together watery instrumental sounds and mathy sensibilities to create apretty, yet simple backdrop for exploring the realm below the ocean surface and the world above it.

JEN APPEL |