Bil ZelmanThe Album Leaf plays Neumos on Saturday, Feb. 6. with Sea Wolf and Anomie Belle.Review by Erin ThompsonBand: The Album LeafAlbum:

A Chorus of StorytellersLabel: Sub PopRelease Date: Today, Feb. 2Rating (Skip, Stream, or Buy): StreamDownload: “Falling From the Sun”A decade into his musical career, A Chorus of Storytellers marks Jimmy LaValle of the Album Leaf’s first time recording with his full touring band. Instead of performing virtually all of the album’s components himself, per usual, here we find LaValle acting more like a classical composer, artfully arranging flows of guitar and synthesizers, as well as supporting strings and horns. The result is a fluent collection of songs, noticeably looser and more expressive than 2006’s Into the Blue Again. The diverse instrumentation of LaValle’s sonic dreamscapes blends modern with pastoral, making the music at once spacey and familiar, illusory and intimate. The 11 songs on Chorus evoke images of gray skies and foggy coastlines, as moody and emotional as an overwrought big-screen romance.