The Album Leaf - Always for You

SEP 12 2006 · 12:00

The Album Leaf - Always for You (2006) Director: Aaron Stewart-Ahn Era: Mid-2000s Indie/Post-Rock Golden Age (2006) - Peak era of Sub Pop-affiliated ambient indie, marked by cinematic music video aesthetics and emotional restraint over spectacle High curatorial value as a rare example of a music video that achieves genuine cinematic poetry within a modest budget. The confirmed Super 16mm production, documented personal creative intent from the director, verifiable San Diego location history, and the video's connection to an emerging filmmaker (Aaron Stewart-Ahn, later of Mandy) make it a multiply significant archival object, culturally, aesthetically, and biographically. Tier 1.5 due to regional specificity and the subsequent career prominence of its director. Context: Released in 2006 on Sub Pop Records as a single from The Album Leaf's album Into The Blue Again, this video sits at the intersection of ambient post-rock and the mid-2000s indie film aesthetic. The split-screen technique, a literary, arthouse device deployed with emotional rather than technical intent, reflects a generation of music video directors influenced by world cinema and indie film. The San Diego setting grounds the video in an authentic regional indie music scene, while the use of Super 16mm gives it a timeless, analog warmth that contrasts with the increasingly digital production of the era. The implicit Haruki Murakami literary reference situates the video within a specific cultural stratum of literate, introspective indie audiences. Director notes: Stewart-Ahn served as both director and producer on this video for Sub Pop Records, with Otaku-House as production company. Shot on Super 16mm film by cinematographer Tarin Anderson and edited by Rob Ryang. The conceptual framework, a split-screen depicting two near-parallel lives in the same city, was drawn directly from the song's emotional content. Stewart-Ahn has described the video as deeply personal, rooted in a real experience of discovering he and a new partner had unknowingly shared the same spaces before meeting. The video was shot entirely on location in San Diego, the band's hometown, including their actual rehearsal space for the performance segments, and local landmarks such as The Turf Club bar. The video was also connected to the broader Death Cab for Cutie DIRECTIONS project, which Stewart-Ahn was concurrently producing.