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New Release: Sea Wolf “Old World Romance”
Sea wolf, aka the project name of singer/songwriter Alex Brown Church, has released his fourth album today courtesy of Dangerbird Records. Old World Romance finds Church back in his house recording as a solo project, but this is neither a grand departure from his previous work or precisely a return to form. The album retains Sea Wolf’s signature sound–melodic, earnest indie folk punctuated by orchestral choruses and shoe-gazing lyrics. Yet, the album does inhabit a different sensibility than prior efforts, but one that is merely an excess of what Sea Wolf has always been about: sentimental and sincere.
In part this is due to the recurring subject matter. Church spins out a series of songs steeped in nostalgia for past friends, past lovers, past worlds. The first track, “Old Friends” set the tone for the songs that follow. It starts out with an acoustic guitar strumming a melody awash in maudlin emotionalism.
Do you remember the show “Felicity” starring Keri Russell and written by, of all people, J.J. Abrams? No. Let me remind you. It’s about a girl who follows a boy to NYU and their college experience. Every episode opens with a montage of black and white photos of the various characters, laughing on front stoops, drinking at bars, studying in the library. The show is always already nostalgic. Old World Romance reads exactly like the kind of proto-reminiscing that defined that TV series. Every song is structured to recollect with wistful longing events that have not yet transpired.
This isn’t to say that the songs are unlistenable. They are the opposite. Catchy, easy, melodic, and comforting in their accessibility. They are, to use a term I keep using, sentimental. Drippy.
The same sentamentalism that makes the first track sound as trite as the opening credits of a TV show, operates with more weight on the rest of the album. “Kasper” and “Changing Seasons” are particular mawkish. And while a few tracks–”In Nothing” and “Dear Fellow Traveller”–drift from that mawkishness just enough to make them stand-out, even they eventual descend into cloying feeling.
There’s nothing really wrong with feeling, emotion, earnestness. But it is possible to be sincere without being sacchrine. Alas, this album failed to achieve that balance.