reax music magazine :: music + culture » Reviews » Sea Wolf - Leaves In The River

There is this moment during the opening title track when the rain is falling on a Halloween night; a boy and girl walk upon a canopied rain drenched street, and my guard drops.  I am right there with the young couple watching the wonderful giddy opening instants of love blossoming only then to have my inner cynic slap me across the face to the reality that I am in a Cameron Crowe movie.  What Sea Wolf is describing—rather poetically—is what Hollywood script pushers call the “meet-cute,” a first act film cliché used to make the audience root for these two kids to get together in the third act.  Cameron Crowe built a career on refurbishing the meet cute (see Say Anything, Almost Famous,) to such saccharinely sweet levels that diabetes testing should be required at all his screenings.  Now Sea Wolf (real name Alex Brown Church) is not that deliberate . . . at least not on yet.  But, in a brilliantly intricate debut, Church crafts a taut pop song beyond the standard rock repertoire.  Using delicate vocals, Parisian accordions, violas, horns, and plinky toy pianos, Sea Wolf himself toys with cherubic innocence to gain your acceptance.  “Black Dirt” and “Middle Distance Runner” are cute enough to reveal Church as an immature flawed character that still remains likeable, a la Jerry Maguire.  But what is this solo mercenary act, the cynic in me celebrates?  Its “You’re A Wolf,” the one track that leads with eerie guitar and moves against the schmaltzy grain toward a semblance of mystery dark impressionism.  It’s a sign that forces me to implore all Hollywood movie execs: please, oh please, keep Cameron Crowe away from Sea Wolf.