Noah and the Whale, Leeds, June 2nd
Noah and the Whale - likeable in Leeds
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Thursday, 05, Jun 2008 12:58
A crowd that included a man who smelt heavily of garlic, many floral print tea-dress-wearing young girls and a profusion of other attendees, filled Leeds' Brudenell Social Club on Monday (June 2nd) to see London-based folk hopefuls Noah and the Whale.
There should be lots of reasons to dislike this band, namely they are public-school educated 20-somethings, who play a music genre that has really never been trendy, while dressing as if they have to be within striking distance of Hoxton Square, just in-case the ensemble of skinny jeans and trilbeys becomes unfashionable.
But as anyone who has heard the ukulele-led folk stomp that is breaktrhrough single Five Years' Time can testify, you'd have to be a bit of a killjoy to stay fuming for long.
This split between loving and hating, stopping and starting carries through into Noah and the Whale's music, as it ranges from arresting stiltedness to full blown foot-tapping raucousness.
Replete (and hell knows that's an annoying word) with fiddle, guitar, squeeze box, melodica, drums and Rebecca, the female singer from support act Slow Club, the band's sonic potential is willfully unusual.
Mary starts with a wafting, almost discordant interchange between squeeze box and bass and guitar lines with smatterings of percussion, before performing a u-turn and galloping off on a mildly syncopated knees-up.
Following minor technical issues, the band moved on to Beautiful World which is one of the set's slower songs that features acerbic lyrics like "unsettled lovers move from f**k to f**k". So often does the song sound like it is about to keel over, it feels like it shouldn't work in a live setting, but ultimately finding the time to playfully rouse itself.
While contenders for future singles, Shape of My Heat and Beating, which features an absolutely killer fiddle hook, didn't manage to get the bizarrely-seated or as lead-singer Charlie put it "listening" crowd to their feet, the songs again showcased the band's potential for hugely pleasing folk-pop.
The set closed with a typically well imagined Smiths cover... (it is rumoured that an entire covers album is in the pipeline) which was amusingly punctuated with Charlie telling one over-enthusiastic floral print tea-dress-wearing young girl to shut up.
Being that this is a band full-up with so many likeable songs that it will surely fully hit its stride soon, it seems pointless to try and pick holes in what was a brilliantly thoughtful and at times boisterously exciting set.
Ed Brown
To read the inthenews.co.uk interview with Noah and the Whale, click here
To order Shape of my Heart, click here
And to pre-order Noah and the Whale's debut album, released on July 14th, click here