Album Review: Sea Wolf – White Water, White Bloom

By Travis Woods

Release Date: 9.22.09

Label:  Dangerbird

Backed by a full band this time and armed with his continually disarming, elegiac and acoustic-bloomed songwriting, Alex Brown Church has cast the autumnal mood of his Sea Wolf debut, Leaves in the River, over a far more energized set of songs on White Water, White Bloom (such as the exceptional orchestral stomp of“Wicked Blood”), crafting an album that sounds not only like a reinvigorated sense of purpose, but a powerfully eclectic and expansive step forward.
And while the album’s best songs tend to be those that most echo Leaves—especially the gorgeous and spare “Orion & Dog” and the rustic closer of “Winter Heir”—it’s refreshing to a hear a songwriter stretching beyond his comfort zone with such moderately bombastic fare, while still infusing each track with the quietly lush and powerful melodies that made his debut so indelibly affecting.  Mixing the intimate, wood-creaked acoustics of Leaves with a bristling orchestral backdrop, White Water, White Bloom is by turns lovely, electric, sparse and breathlessly driving, sometimes within the course of a single song.  It’s an album that not only lives up to the promise of its predecessor, but reaches beyond it as well.

Listen to “Wicked Blood” from White Water, White Bloom

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September 22, 2009 | Filed Under Album Reviews, New Local Music in 2009 

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