Taking a break from recording their upcoming third album, tonight sees Noah And The Whale return for a one-off gig at the venue where they launched their debut album two years ago.
The opening track is a choral-backed ‘Love Of An Orchestra’, which sets the musical tone for the rest of the evening, with rich, melodic violins and commanding bursts of trumpets. The band emphatically propel themselves through a set-list comprised predominantly of tracks from their lyrically raw second album, with ‘I Have Nothing’ amusingly causing lead singer Charlie to declare that he wished he’d come up with better song names. Legendary pedal steel guitarist B.J. Cole arrives onstage to accompany the band during ‘My Door Is Always Open’, and fan favourites such as ‘2 Atoms In A Molecule’ and ‘Jocasta’ from Noah And The Whale’s more jovial first release are slotted in amongst their more poignant songs to get everyone dancing. Somewhat disappointingly, it is ‘Five Years Time’ that draws the loudest response from the crowd, despite this being far from their most rousing of songs. And the band also take the opportunity to debut a new track in the encore, establishing that their new sound won't be a huge departure from their most recent work.
There is not an ounce of pretention with this folk act, and this modesty is part of their overwhelming charm. The simplicity of their performance, delicately meshed with poignantly intense lyrics, makes Noah And The Whale’s music nothing but sincerely heartrending. And for a band whose latest material is founded upon the tale of a loss of love, there is, ironically, a hell of a lot of it in the room tonight.
This review was originally posted on www.the-fly.co.uk
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