First Watch: The Album Leaf, 'New Soul'

Jimmy LaValle's dream pop project The Album Leaf is back with a new video and its first new music since 2010's A Chorus Of Storytellers. The video, for the song "New Soul," is grand and cosmic, but also strangely intimate, with a seemingly simple narrative about a primitive family and how they manage to survive in a hostile world.

The video is an unusual pairing of LaValle's ideas about moving on in life with director Michael Raines' sense of space and time. "We never had a conversation about the song's meaning or intentions," Raines tells us in an email. "I wanted to make something that felt expansive, like the song itself, but ultimately let the viewer decide who this woman was and whether it was a story about death, rebirth, or both."

"New Soul" is from Between Waves, due out sometime in 2016. While The Album Leaf is known in part for its contemplative instrumental pieces, "New Soul" includes lyrics sung by LaValle. "I wanted to experiment with my vocals," he tells us. "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, adding delay trails and effects to support it. Lyrically, the song is about moving forward, getting out of your comfort zone."

In addition to the new album, The Album Leaf is scheduled to play its entire breakout LP, 2004's In A Safe Place, at next month's All Tomorrow's Parties festival in Wales.

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