The crepuscular songs on the debut album of London quintet the Leaf Library are typically set outdoors on the coast of southern England, and involve gazing in melancholy wonder at the world. Their lyrics are concerned with time’s repetitions, the movement of the seasons, the rhythms of night and day, and there’s circular motion, too, in the way the spare verses are repeated like mantras. “Seas turn white / By October light / swim away from the summer sun,” sings Kate Gibson softly on the melancholic Pushing/Swimming. There’s further repetition in the music itself, whether the Stereolab-like motorik pop of Asleep Between Stations, or the rippling acoustic patterns of Acre. It’s easy to get lost in the woozy ebb and flow of the twinkling arpeggios of Rings of Saturn, named after WG Sebald’s East Anglia travelogue. The arrangements are never fussy, but there are some delightful touches, with warm horns bursting from the vintage synths like the first rays of dawn.
