In the time that’s elapsed since its last proper album, 2010’s A Chorus Of Storytellers, Jimmy LaValle’s the Album Leaf has popped up with a soundtrack release and a collab with Sun Kil Moon, but the entity’s (the new Between Waves is the first A. Leaf LP to be made as a band effort) exploration of all things ambient, electronic and organically understated when it comes to both instrumental endeavors and the application of the aforementioned to a very contemporary-sounding indie-pop is what prevails on Between Waves. The Album Leaf will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our review of Between Waves.
Michael Raines: Nell Zink has written something truly unique with The Wallcreeper. The story of an American couple loitering around Europe as they struggle to find meaning in the Big Things (life, marriage, identity) to the seemingly random (dubstep, environmental terrorism, birds) might read weird-for-the-sake-of-weird at first, but Zink’s writing is so compelling, bold and wholly original—there’s really nothing to compare it to. It’s honest, ironically detached, cynical to its core but immensely entertaining; it’s one of the best books of the last decade and at 190 pages, there’s no reason you shouldn’t give it a chance.
