Jimmy LaValle and his band took almost three years to record their latest album. While all of that time wasn’t spent only on perfecting the band’s already beautiful, sweeping symphonic and often ethereal sound (LaValle also got married during the break, and reportedly weathered a serious bout with writer’s block), the result is near perfect.
Touring with an additional five musicians, the group proved that their new path is on more than solid footing in front of a nearly sold-out last Thursday night with a unique, almost overwhelming, blend of visual and sonic imagery.
Lavalle, surrounded by enough electronic equipment, cords, keyboards and computers to run a small country (it seemed), was off-center on a stage that included Drew Andrews on guitar, additional keyboards and vocals, Timothy Reece on drums (the dude is a metronome’s nightmare — never a missed beat, and exactly the right volume for the band’s ambient sound), Matthew Resovich on violins, more keyboards and vocals, Gram LeBron on bass, even more keyboards and Andrew Pates in control of the visual side of the compositions.
As crowded as it sounds, the music and lights made the stage seem immense — and the space inside the Bluebird itself positively cavernous. Scattered strategically around the stage were bars of LEDs that glowed in multiple colors, throbbing at times in rhythm, further cementing the feeling of a subterranean world, albeit a world of warm comfort instead of damp cold.
They started the set with selections from their newest release, “A Chorus of Storytellers” (released in February) including “Falling from the Sun,” “Broken Arrow” and the impressive “There is a Wind,” and had the audience swept up and rapt almost immediately. The arrangements enveloped everyone cinematically, as if all of us were being transported directly into the center of the emotional cruxes of film after film, faced with eventual dramatic denouements that never appeared. About halfway through the set Lavalle announced that the preceding songs were all from their latest record, as if to set a clear delineation in the show, after which they forged on into a selection from the group’s impressive 10-year history.
“Thule,” “The Outer Banks” and “Twenty Two Fourteen” were notable among the rest of a set that recalled Vangelis or Brian Eno, and Lavelle gesticulated at his Moog, visibly taken into the music at least as completely as the audience. Resovich switched from the violin — alternately soft and powerful — to keyboards repeatedly, while Reece kept impressive time throughout. “Storytellers” was reportedly recorded live with a full band — a first for the Album Leaf — and it showed in the stage show.
Each of the musicians was more than comfortable with their part in the complexity, and they all seemed to have plenty of room to enjoy themselves as well.
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Billy Thieme is a Denver-based writer, an old-school punk and a huge follower of Denver’s vibrant local music scene. Follow Billy’s explorations at , and his giglist at .
Josh Barrett is a Denver-based photographer and new contributor to Reverb. Check out .
