Sea Wolf

Leaves in the River

(Dangerbird)

Record Review by Sarah Jane

The delicate aroma of roasting turkey legs (and patchouli) wafts through Sea Wolf’s debut album Leaves In The River. A flower child with dem ol’ “Kozmic Blues”, Sir Alex Brown Church’s Sea Wolf lives in a world of ever-changing transients. A Greyhound bus depot away from the buskers and crazy homeless people he encountered in his debut EP Get To The River Before It Runs Too Low, disenchanted carnies (“Winter Windows”) and a kindly organ grinder and his monkey (“Song For The Dead”) Walk Among Us this time around. Unlike the minimalist indie folk rock of Get To The River Before It Runs Too Low, the trouveur sonnets of Sea Wolf’s full length Leaves In The River are like a campy weed-infused ‘60s horror movie set in the middle ages.

Small-town Goth token of love “Black Leaf Falls” and Arthurian legend themed “Black Dirt”’s electric pianos are super groovy and macabre. “Song For The Dead” has the same Danny Cohenisms and kitschy approach to its Misfits morbid subject matter. Hitch hike danceable, you ask. Yes! “Welcome to the ‘60s”, indeed. John Travolta’s pink sequined boyhood dreams have found a second home.

“Neutral Ground” begins with the sound of falling in a “Dream At Tempo 119”, landing in a genteel acoustic melody, and then falls again. It’s pretty the way a Sea Wolf song should be. The KCRW radio friendly “The Cold, The Dark, And The Silence” is another good one. Joy Division depressing and Interpol hooky, “The Cold, The Dark, And The Silence” is a well-composed song about drowning in ones own loneliness. I’m glad “You’re A Wolf” is included. A keeper from Sea Wolf’s EP Get To The River Before It Runs Too Low, here again it is my favorite.

Title track “Leaves In The River” is a sentimental “Rainy Days And Mondays” field recording of a fleeting Halloween night romance. The cynically minded “Winter Windows” is peerless in its Mexican standoff-turned off kilter polka-turned mystical tilt-a-whirl hullabaloo. Wintry 15th century folk song “The Rose Captain” lulls with sweet declarations of unending renaissance faire geek love. Sounds strange, but in Leaves In The River’s medieval psychedelic way, it works.