The Album Leaf

The Album Leaf returns with ambient electronic track ‘New Soul’, which was out on 9 November.

“I wanted to experiment with my vocals,” Jimmy LaVelle says about the song. “I’ve never been fully comfortable with the inconsistencies of my voice. I’m not a singer, I just choose to sing sometimes. I wanted to keep the honesty and not think about it too much. Lyrically, the song is about moving forward, getting out of your comfort zone.”

The video was directed by Michael Raines, who has previously worked with the band on the 2014 tour documentary ‘Beyond There’, and the award winning cinematographer is Mike Simpson (Alt-J, Lil’ Wayne, Solange, David Byrne).

“We had little resources,” LaValle explains, “So we spent a weekend in Joshua Tree desert with friends and family contributing to the making of this video and I’m amazed with the result.”

Raines elaborates: “We never had a conversation about the song’s meaning or intentions, and Jimmy gave me a great deal of freedom when it came to creating the concept. Listening to “New Soul”, I looked to the films of Larisa Sheptiko, American Westerns, and more specifically, a scene from Béla Tarr’s Satantango (which I blatantly ripped off). My hope was to make something that alluded to a larger narrative, as if the video was a slice of a feature film. I wanted to make something that felt expansive, like the song itself, but ultimately let the viewer decide who this women was and whether it was a story about death, rebirth, or both.”

Sounds like: Mew, Nordic Giants, Sigur Rós, Saxon Shore, Explosions in the Sky, Alt-J

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