Film + TV Composers
The Album Leaf
Bottled up on the road long enough, LaValle felt the timing was right to give it a go from a different angle.
Using time bought by the success of his Sub Pop debut, 2004's In a Safe Place (which saw songs as the soundtrack to six episodes of The OC, and stints with CBS, NBC and Showtime), LaValle sequestered himself for six months in his San Diego house solely to write.
This upswing of downtime resulted in his fourth full-length, Into the Blue Again.
Personal focus has been LaValle's primary objective with Into the Blue Again.
The album's 10 tracks exhibit an elegant, ascendant assurance informed by LaValle's more settled relationships at home.
While still delivering the placidity of a track such as album opener "The Light," LaValle has composed even more corporeal, insistent cuts such as "Shine" and "Red-Eye."
Into the Blue Again also showcases LaValle's increasingly confident, buoyant vocals striking heightened presence on unfeigned selections "Always for You," "Writings on the Wall" and "Wherever I Go."
There is a greater sense of both the "I" and eye in the way LaValle lays out the topography of his pivotal past and makes it universally palpable.