08.
Noah And The Whale
The First Days Of Spring
The second year in a row that Noah And The Whale have made the list, though this time they have improved on 2008’s #14 placing for Peaceful, The World Lays Me Down and broken into the top 10. The First Days of Spring is an entirely different animal from Peaceful, The World Lays Me Down, though. Where their debut was uplifting and whimsical, their sophomore effort is melancholic and sparse. This huge shift has its roots in the breakup between frontman Charlie Fink and Laura Marling (who was formerly a member of Noah And The Whale and who’s excellent solo album Fink produced). The First Days of Spring is therefore almost entirely about that breakup. It’s not a bitter record, but rather a very sad one (ie, it is in the same circle as Nick Cave’s The Boatman’s Call, and in a different one to PJ Harvey’s Is This Desire? on the album-about-a-break-up Venn diagram). At times it can get a little much if you’re not in the mood (track names include ‘I Have Nothing’ and ‘My Broken Heart’). Yet, loving and losing has brought the best out in Fink, and The First Days of Spring is a much more accomplished, musically adventurous and lyrically developed album than their debut. It is split into two chunks, separated by the uplifting and orchestral (as the name would suggest) ‘Love Of An Orchestra’. This track is completely different in tone to everything else, but it is brilliantly placed to raise the spirits at just the right time, and must have been written when Fink was in a more philosophical mood (‘I know I’ll never be lonely/I’ve got songs in my blood’). An album that’s not for the faint hearted (as it were), or anyone who views a broken heart as a self-indulgence. But, for anyone who thinks such things give rise to some of the best art, this is an album to wallow in.
Noah And The Whale
The First Days Of Spring
The second year in a row that Noah And The Whale have made the list, though this time they have improved on 2008’s #14 placing for Peaceful, The World Lays Me Down and broken into the top 10. The First Days of Spring is an entirely different animal from Peaceful, The World Lays Me Down, though. Where their debut was uplifting and whimsical, their sophomore effort is melancholic and sparse. This huge shift has its roots in the breakup between frontman Charlie Fink and Laura Marling (who was formerly a member of Noah And The Whale and who’s excellent solo album Fink produced). The First Days of Spring is therefore almost entirely about that breakup. It’s not a bitter record, but rather a very sad one (ie, it is in the same circle as Nick Cave’s The Boatman’s Call, and in a different one to PJ Harvey’s Is This Desire? on the album-about-a-break-up Venn diagram). At times it can get a little much if you’re not in the mood (track names include ‘I Have Nothing’ and ‘My Broken Heart’). Yet, loving and losing has brought the best out in Fink, and The First Days of Spring is a much more accomplished, musically adventurous and lyrically developed album than their debut. It is split into two chunks, separated by the uplifting and orchestral (as the name would suggest) ‘Love Of An Orchestra’. This track is completely different in tone to everything else, but it is brilliantly placed to raise the spirits at just the right time, and must have been written when Fink was in a more philosophical mood (‘I know I’ll never be lonely/I’ve got songs in my blood’). An album that’s not for the faint hearted (as it were), or anyone who views a broken heart as a self-indulgence. But, for anyone who thinks such things give rise to some of the best art, this is an album to wallow in.