Noah And The Whale - Last Night On Earth

Our review
Customer reviews
Press release
Soundclips

2...according to our Clinton on Fri 04 Mar, 2011.

Now here's a shock for you, I was quite taken with Noah and The Whale's debut and their ubiquitous hit 'Five Years Time' particularly after seeing them cheer everyone up at a miserable festival with their sunny pop ditty's. My high hopes for their second album were dashed when 'First Day of spring' emerged only to sound like the incessant whining's of a self obsessed teenager dumped by his girlfriend (albeit Laura Marling). Those hoping for a return to form with this new effort will be horrified by 'Tonight's the Kind of Night' which aims at Triffids style widescreen production but its chorus sounds more like 'Tonight I'm Yours' era Rod Stewart massacring a Bruce Springsteen B Side. It is unremittingly, unrelentingly awful. The single 'L.I.F.E.G.O.E.S.O.N' is catchy enough and recalls early Deacon Blue (no, come back that's not 100% a criticism) but it is as irritating as its title is to type. Things pick up a little with 'Wild Thing' which does manage to successfully sound like The Triffids but the 'Summer of 69' aping 'Give it all Back' is where this album gets taken off the stereo never to return. The suits at Mercury are obviously pushing these in a commercial direction, it may yield a bit of Radio 2 airplay and a few lighters in the air summer festival appearances but its horrible to listen to.

To play these clips you need to either update your browser (Norman Records recommends Google Chrome) or update your Flash plugin.

"In the early January of last year, Charlie Fink set to work on Noah and the Whale's third album. Holed up in a synagogue in East London, he had little to begin with — a few fragments, a sketch for a 10-minute song that resembled Street Hassle, and a set of lyrics begun on a New Year's Day train from Wales to London. But what little there was seemed to suggest the beginnings of something quite special, something markedly different to the songs they had written before. The continued maturation of Noah and the Whale has been a pleasing thing to follow — from the joyous burst of their debut, Peaceful, the World Lays Me Down, through the lovelorn sobriety of The First Days of Spring, it now reaches a kind of fruition on Last Night on Earth. Last Night on Earth possesses a curiosity and a vibrancy, a romance and a restlessness, and a clutch of songs that mark out Fink as not just as one of the best songwriters of his generation, but also as a supremely gifted storyteller. The album's strong narrative thread was in part inspired by Lou Reed's 1973 album Berlin as well as Tom Waits' 1992 record Bone Machine, and a little Arthur Russell thrown in for good measure. “Just people songs,” is how Fink describes it. “These are simple stories, so you could tell them in hundreds of different ways, and the way you tell them, that's sort of the music.” The way he tells them is at times broad-skied and anthemic — particularly on tracks such as L.I.F.E.G.O.E.S.O.N and Tonight's The Kind Of Night, while at others there are strokes of unabashed pop — Life Is Life, for example, or Just Me Before We Met. And at others still, such as on final track Old Joy, there is a sweet kind of wistfulness. Lyrically, they range from the nostalgic to the vital, songs charged with an urgency, a sense of movement, and an appetite for adventure and the unknown. It is, in many senses, a true coming of age record. Co-produced by Fink and Jason Lader [Julian Casablancas, The Mars Volta] in Los Angeles, Last Night on Earth features backing vocals by Jen Turner from Here We Go Magic, and gospel vocals by the legendary Waters Sisters.

Be the first to review this record. Best reviewer each month gets £10 off their next order!