Sea Wolf: Leaves In The River (Dangerbird)

13:54 | Monday July 21, 2008

Close your eyes and turn the CD inlay over as this album’s eponymous opener kicks in and you’ll probably stake your own mother on it being a Conor Oberst recording. In fact, this largely brooding body of work comes from LA-based film-school graduate Alex Brown Church and the Sea Wolf project he fronts.

Drawing from a host of contemporary US indie rock influences, the sombre Winter Windows sounds like The National with a sudden penchant for cello breaks, as it teeters on the edge of ambivalence before breaking into a big chorus.

When Sea Wolf plant their flag firmly in this territory (as they do elsewhere on Black Dirt, You’re A Wolf and the shimmering Cold, The Dark & The Silence), this album edges closer to brilliance, even if it is the kind of thing you’ve probably heard before from any erstwhile singer-songwriter with a guitar and a nice line in melancholy storytelling.

Indeed the comparisons to records of the quality of the aforementioned National’s Boxer cannot be escaped, as an initially simple album becomes more beguiling with repeated listening and many of the understated choruses are suddenly charged with bittersweet atmosphere and anthemic qualities.