When you compare Carmen Rizzo's latest album Looking Through Leaves with his debut, Lost Art of the Idle Moment, you'll immediately notice there is really no comparison. Well not really, until you listen closely. Rizzo's Idle Moment came out in 2005 and it featured a lot of singers who were blossoming at the time, from Esthero and Jem to Digable Planets' Ladybug Mecca. As a work, it was laid back and plugged very much into the soft, feminine, chilled out style of the time. So what makes Looking Through Leaves so different, besides five years of an artists growth? Really, how different could it be?

1. Through the Storm
2. This Life (feat. Kate Havnevik)
3. Until You Find Another (feat. Shana Halligan)
4. We'll Fly (feat. Rosey)
5. Bring the Mountain Down (feat. Grant Lee Phillips)
6. Strada
7. Passing By (feat. January Thompson)
8. Element of Hope

You'll find Carmen Rizzo working with a variety of singers, just as before, and he even reunites with Norwegian singer Kate Havnevik. Through his ties to the Los Angeles music scene, he brings in vocalists like Bitter:Sweet singer Shana Halligan, and Rosey. Just as with his debut, he even brings in a mix of male and female vocalists.

If you're familiar with that certain sound of the Nettwerk label, you'll recognize it hear. It's feminine, mystical, pop infected, and drifts from poles of peculiar to obvious dance styles, while often making stops at more atmospheric, mood setting junctions. The lounge and chillout influences are no longer so prevalent in Rizzo's sound, at least not in the style they were in his debut. Instead, he incorporates the dreamy, synthesized elements that artists in his same shoes would have produced back in the early 90s, but it's pushed forward by excellent production quality. Even though there are warm, analog, hand-strummed, breath blown instruments here, you don't leave with the impression you really heard any. Essentially, it's all synthesized. Which doesn't keep it from delivering some beautiful sounds.

The songs lean from ambient to danceable, pretty much one after the other, in strict sequence. The album relies on the listener being invested in its lyrical stories and pervasive, mystical moods, but at only eight songs, might have benefited from a few more to help ease its transitions of energy and mood. Taking it in on a track-by-track, digital consumption level, may be the best way to get started. After all, when looking through leaves you never see everything in one unbroken scene. You see slivers and fragments of the whole beyond.

http://soundcloud.com/carmenrizzo/carmen-rizzo-this-life-f-kate-havnevik

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