Following up from the brilliant single ‘What Changed?’ released a few weeks ago, duo Leaf Mosaic have unveiled their electrifying debut album ‘Sapient’ and it is clear a powerful new force has emerged. The membership of the duo create a certain lever of expectations: consisting of two pillars of the indie music scene: Matthew Sigley (The Daytime Frequency, The Earthmen, Video Video, The Lovetones, The Steinbecks, Polak) and Joshua Meadows (The Sugargliders, The Steinbecks, The Bell Streets).
The DNA is undenied and the expectations are exceeded. Sigley, in charge of the instrumentation, says:
Leaf Mosaic is the band I always wanted to be in. I’d always wanted to write catchy eighties-tinged pop songs that someone else would write the lyrics for and sing. Some of my favourite eighties bands like Naked Eyes, The Twins and Yazoo all functioned this way. And as Josh is one of my favourite lyricists, he was the perfect partner for this project.
Meadows adds:
The Leaf Mosaic lyrics are part observation, part fantasy. We celebrate and memorialise things that are lost and out of reach because they contribute to what we are today. Matt and I have a shared language and love of music that has made creating these songs an act of intuition and a great pleasure.
The result is something that doesn’t deny its eighties synth band influences but uses them to craft an album of vibrant contemporary indie pop.
Opening track ‘Bullet Train’ is filled with nostalgia and a soft pattering flow with its insistent percussion and gentle delivery – reminding me of bands like The Lotus Eaters or China Crisis:
You were standing there
Near enough to touch
Then whisked away
By the bullet train
It has a beautiful air, a touch of jangling acoustic guitar strokes that sit comfortably above the liquid bass and soothing synths. The duo says the track is:
… built around an Oberheim DX drum pattern (the drum machine used on New Order’s ‘Blue Monday’) and a rising chord progression played on a Vox Continental organ, topped with layered Roland Juno 106 synths and a vocal lamenting the relentless passage of time.
‘Continental Drift’ has a muscular synth bass punctuated by a smooth synth riff and a certain naivety in the lyrics:
I love mountains shrouded in mystery
Deep in a land with contested history
Say what you really mean
Say it from the start
Sing it from the heart
The chorus is filled with a liquid synth wash and elements of Visage and Kraftwerk are detectable. The gentle pace continues into ‘Zodiaque’ with its yearning delivery and a pop sensibility that reflects The Lightning Seeds, augmented by some surprising instrumentation that gives the track its own distinct flavour.
‘Falling Hearts’ is a spritely bright track that positively scampers out of the speakers with an ambulant bass and a sixties glow. a perky guitar riff floats over psychedelic whisperings and sudden twists and turns. In contrast, ‘The Branch Line’ speeds up and a very The Go-betweens Robert Forster delivery, sardonic and studied.
‘Shooting Star’ again reminds of the gentle dappling pop of China Crisis mixed in with a gurgling Kraftwerk synth, pure pop sensibilities that are luminescent.
An opening rolling piano provides the undercurrent for ‘It Means Nothing Without You’ with a melodic bass dancing underneath and an anthemic chorus that sparkles.
There is a thrilling romanticism in ‘Particles (Mystery of Love)’ and a very M83 synth thunder:
Over sea, under stone, in the street, on the phone
By the shrine, at the fair, on the shore, everywhere
As a child sees afresh I’m amazed
Taken by the mystery of love.
The delivery is reminiscent of Pet Shop boys: indelible, wry vocals and liquid instrumentation. the band says of the track:
Constructed on a Korg Poly 800 synth with reverse black and white keys, popular with musicians in the Soviet Union in the ’80s, ‘Particles’ explores the mystery of love. Who can explain or understand the all-consuming nature of infatuation, or the thrill of mutual attraction, or how a long love lasts?
The single ‘What Changed?’ has a pattering percussive beat with washes of synths, and spoken vocals in the verses that have a reflective antipodean inflexion. As the singing enters, it heralds something quite ethereal as the synths build up and gentle riffs dapple and fold in the ether. You can detect elements of Pet Shop Boys in a swirling dance with The Lightning Seeds and Underground Lovers: pure pop delivered on scaling melodies and an atmospheric fugue filled with melancholy.
Meadows says:
The lyrics started to take shape when I was bushwalking in Gariwerd, the Grampians, in Victoria’s west – a place of great beauty and deep spiritual significance. I was thinking about the closeness I felt to nature – birds, trees, animals, even rocks, rivers and mountains – when I was a little boy and about how that connection can get weaker the more enmeshed you become in the human adult world. It’s about the forces that pull us in different directions and the inevitability that people and places will change and about finding some peace in reconnecting with nature.
Maestro of the instrumentation, Sigley, says:
Back in 2020 when we were all locked inside, I started messing around with some instruments I hadn’t used for a while. In the case of ‘What changed?’ it was my 1983 Emu Systems Drumulator Drum Machine, made famous by Depeche Mode on their album Construction Time Again and the singles ‘Everything counts’ and ‘Love in itself’. I came up with a driving tom-based loop with no idea what was to come next. I had to decide whether to make it a fast-paced song or slow it down. After listening to the pattern on repeat I wrote the slow plaintive rich chorus chords which I played on the Roland Juno 106. From there on, the song started to make sense.
The result is something quite mesmerising. The track comes with a video from Dani Bickford with unfolding and blooming flowers – a fitting palimpsest for the antithetically organic feel of the electronica:
Last track ‘A Price You Can’t Afford’ opens with gentle acoustic guitars and soft synths that float like a silken veil in the ether.
‘Sapient’ is a soothing journey that mixes acoustic and electronic instruments, with absolutely pure pop melodies and gentle romantic lyrics. It is an album that wears its eighties synth pop influences proudly on its frilly sleeves, and yet adds and augments this with innovation and creativity, adding a stylish velvet sixties glow resulting in something quite special and thoroughly enjoyable.
‘Sapient’ was mixed and mastered by Liam Snowy Halliwell (who also plays guitar on ‘The Branch Line’) and is out now and available through the link above and via all the usual sites.. Photography and artwork by Sigley himself.
