- Label
- Mercury
- Release date
- 31st August 2009
- Genre
- Indie
- Buy this album
- Order CD
A folk-opera for the dumped and ditched.
2009 may well go down as the year of the unexpectedly good second album. Follow musical advancements from The Horrors, Jack Penate and The Maccabees, South Londoners Noah & The Whale are the latest act to buck the trend of the so-called difficult second album. In brief: The First Days Of Spring is just magical.
With a narrative running through it's entire length (it arrives with an accompanying movie), the tracks sketch out the sorrows, denial and melancholy that accompany the end of a romance (it should be noted that singer Charlie Fink and ex-member Laura Marling split shortly before the album was written but the sentiments and atmosphere are universal).
The title track and Blue Skies come with spoonfuls of bittersweet lyrics but it’s far from a maudlin exercise. With echoes of Sufjan Stevens and the rich arrangements of Belle & Sebastian, there is much more depth here than their pop folk debut, the band taking as many musical risks as Fink makes lyrically. Despite the sadness at the core this is an uplifting, life-affirming wonder of an album.
More to try:
David Kitt: The Big Romance
Sufjan Stevens: Seven Swans
Everything But The Girl: Eden
Belle & Sebastian: Dear Catastrophe Waitress
