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Album Details

• Artist: Sea Wolf
• Album: Leaves In The River
• Label: Dangerbird Records
• Year of Release: 2007
• ME Rating:
• Reviewed by: mschmitt on 2007-07-26

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Ultimately, it’s hard to play a hand of quiet angsty drama when playing-for-keeps in indie poker. There’s too much pressure to be deep, different, and dissenting. Bands either resort to crushing any of that emotional baggage under catchy dance-floor pop-fests, hard-to-grasp imagery and tales, or a stereotypical lone acoustic guitar. Yet Los Angeles’ Sea Wolf has found a way to sneak over-bearing sentiment into quite trendy indie tunes.

Born out of the Ship Collective (which also gave rise to Silversun Pickups), Sea Wolf garnered levels of notability with their debut EP Get To The River Before It Runs Too Low and namesake track “You’re A Wolf.” The favored track appears early in their debut full-length Leaves In The River, before breaking way to new material. Every track is packed to the brim with tales of lost love and raw emotions. Sea Wolf can effortlessly get away with this – to the point of evading your attentions completely if you’re not careful—in part because singer Alex Church’s weary voice drones in a way that whispers “I’ve seen too much.” The instrumentals in tracks like “The Cold, The Dark, And The Silence” are quiet enough to respect the emotional content of the lyrics, but melodic enough to break past the serotypes of acoustic guitar-wielding singer/songwriters.

Mild electronic influences pop up here and there within Leaves In The River, whether its in the subtlety layered drum machine or rhythmic melodies of “Don’t You Love Me Anymore.” All of these layers – the haunting lyrical content, vocal delivery, and variety of instrumental influence – blend well together to create a delicious mixture of lo-fi sensibilities that make Sea Wolf different from the pack.

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