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A Chorus of Storytellers
Generally favorable reviews
Based on 17 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 3 votes
Read user comments
Rate this album >
Album Info
Label: Sub Pop
Release Date: 02 February 2010
Discs: 1 disc
Genre(s): Alternative, Indie, Electronic
Summary
Recorded in Seattle but remixed in Iceland by Jón Birgisson of Sigur Rós, A Chorus of Storytellers is the fifth album led by multi-instrumentalist Jimmy LaValle of the Album Leaf.
Also By This Artist: In A Safe Place Into The Blue Again
Also On The Web: MySpace Official Artist Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
BBC Music
However, as the album progresses, with its mix of violins, guitar, synths and fitful percussion, a paradoxical mood and feel is established – desolate yet comforting, glacial yet warm, remote yet intimate, never more so than on Summer Fog.
Read Full Review >musicOMH.com
Although Storytellers' qualities imbue it with sufficient class to shine forth from the background (in much the same way as Air's Virgin Suicides score, perhaps), its gentility and decorum are so consistent that this is an LP that needs to be sought out.
Read Full Review >Uncut
The band's plush indietronica is still in place, but there's greater warmth and imagination, and real consistency. [Mar 2010, p.79]
Alternative Press
While storytellers has a decent amount of vocals, it's still the gorgeous, lush melodies and layered soundscapes that speak the loudest. [Mar 2010, p.90]
Absolute Punk (Staff reviews)
In comparison with the current post-rock landscape, it's largely uninteresting, but in creating a palatable easy-listening experience, it's a definite success. Like its predecessors, though, this is one story that's probably best told at bedtime.
Read Full Review >Billboard.com
The new ambition found on "A Chorus of Storytellers" has led the Album Leaf to its best execution yet.
Read Full Review >Prefix Magazine
Traces of other San Diego bands like Pinback and LaValle's own Tristeza and the Black Heart Procession are distinctly here, culminating in mellow harmonies, relaxed bass lines and subtle ambient effects.
Read Full Review >Clash Music
The Sun seems to have come out over The Album Leaf’s glacial landscape with some songs here edging towards a kind of elegant, and very pretty, pop.
Read Full Review >cokemachineglow
In this way, A Chorus of Storytellers resembles the Flaming Lips’ Embryonic (2009) in that it’s a characteristic and maybe even obvious album that stuffs a band’s commercial instincts under a protective layer of feints and refusals
Read Full Review >PopMatters
While the decidedly middle-of-the-road mood of A Chorus of Storytellers won’t get anyone fired up, though, the way that mood is constructed is the album’s primary appeal.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club)
The few songs sporting LaValle’s breathy vocals are a plus, and the percussion is heavier this time around, which is a welcome change from his previous predilection for glitch.
Read Full Review >Pitchfork
Sure, most of Chorus is pretty, but it's only that: Between the glistening guitars, cymbal washes, sighing strings, and electric piano, the beauty LaValle conjures is effortless but ultimately less impressive for not having any sort of contrast.
Read Full Review >Drowned In Sound
A Chorus Of Storytellers fits in quite succinctly alongside its predecessors, and while perhaps not scaling the skyscraping heights of An Orchestrated Rise To Fall or In A Safe Place, doesn't rally represent a decline in standards either.
Read Full Review >All Music Guide
All in all, A Chorus of Storytellers makes for better background music than a main attraction.
Read Full Review >No Ripcord
However many crystalline moments of beauty their records contain (and of course there are some to be found here), for me there remains a cloying sense of the overtly melodramatic, of uninventive repetition that it is hard to ignore.
Read Full Review >NOW Magazine
Admirable attempts are made to emulate tourmates Lymbyc Systym on Blank Pages, but they fall short of that band’s visceral energy and edge.
Read Full Review >Tiny Mix Tapes
LaValle’s been trading in spitshined tonal conventions and vacuum-sealed beauty for quite some time now, and this might well be his best effort at putting it to record. But there are already three Album Leaf LPs that do this exact same thing, and the prospect of him doing that thing slightly better simply fails to excite.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this album is 8.6 (out of 10) based on 3 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Mike gave it a9:
Calm, ambient, melodic - A Chorus Of Storytellers made me feel of spring spirit right now. Maybe in some song it feels like self-repeating - but it's never boring. One of the best of the Album Leaf.
