I like this, actually. In fact I like it loads more than I expected to, although that’s hardly surprising, given how utterly insipid their debut album turned out to be. Far from making a difficult second album, however, Noah & the Whale appear to have made a liberated one. It’s almost like they froze up when shiny labels came a-knocking the first time around, but having got that nervous, awkward first time out of the way, they’re pumping away for all they’re worth these days.
Alright, sorry, that’s a bit over the top. But there was definitely a slightly constipated feel to their first record whereas this, for all I wouldn’t call it a work of genius exactly, feels like a weight has been lifted from their shoulders. Instead of embellishing songs with a little orchestration here and there, like some sort of decorative sprinkling of parsley, here they keep things plain until the time comes to go for it with relish, and then they don’t hold back.
Basically, unlike last time, they are actually showing some nuts.
As I said, I don’t love all of this by any means, but it’s all about context. Had I never heard any of their previous output I might shrug my shoulders a little and admit that some of it was pretty good, but some was pretty medium. As it is, with my expectations formed by their debut album, I am very much impressed.
It opens with The First Days of Spring, which sounds liek a statement of intent for the record itself: bold and building to an almighty, string-laden climax. Songs like My Broken Heart go from acoustic lament to flamboyant orchestration, only to end with a climactically proggy guitar solo. It’s weird, but I kind of like it. After that, two slightly preposterous instrumentals bookend a track called Love of an Orchestra, which is on the verge of taking on Bohemian Rhapsody at its own game, with nods to Broadway musicals and god knows what else.
First Days of Spring is weird, it’s bold and I have found a massive amount of new respect for this band on the back of this record. It shatters any preconceptions formed by their early stuff and, more admirably, rather risks entirely losing the audience they garnered with it. It’s telling that this record was previewed with Blue Skies, one of the blandest songs on the album: that strikes me as the work of a nervous PR department fearful of alienating their base.
There’s also some evidence of real emotion in the music again. Stranger is harsh. It reminds me of some of Aidan Moffat’s album I Can Hear Your Heart, albeit in a massively different style. The opening verse is superb – evoking the guilt, confusion and intrusive, treacherous reality of waking up with a stranger for the first time since a devastating breakup. After that things kind of tail off. The last three songs – Blue Skies, Slow Glass and My Door is Always Open – are all a bit ho-hum once again, so it kind of peters out. The sentiment is right though, and I can see where they were coming from, because in the last minute of the whole record the pace lifts again to a more purposeful strum and a rising, defiant vocal, bringing everything to a close on a note of determinaton and optimism.
So I am not about to give this full marks or anything because, despite that last minute, the album does tail off disappointingly in a musical sense. But this is pretty much a concept album in many ways, and generally it works really, really well. Also, I find myself eating a fair few of the words I have uttered about this lot in the past, and that is something I respect bands for almost as much as anything else.
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Noah & the Whale – Stranger
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