"The First Days of Spring" - Noah and the Whale

The First Days of Spring - A Film By Noah And The Whale from charlie fink on Vimeo.

Something it's important to know is that I will forever relate Noah and the Whale to F. Scott Fitzgerald. I was lucky enough to briefly meet them last year, and being an embarrassing fangirl I asked them to sign something for me, but the only thing I had with me that was in any way paper was my copy of "This Side of Paradise", which their lovely guitarist went on to exclaim he had a framed copy of in his living room. A lot of the time I go to read that book I open it and remember, and it's really funny to me because a folk pop band inside the pages of an American classic is like a metaphor for what their music has become.

There are some albums it's easy to write and talk about straight away, because you're so full of words and thoughts at first listen that you're bursting with the need to push them into the world. Some take longer, because they need exploring, and there's more to discover, and parts of it don't make sense yet. And then there's the third kind, where you tell yourself to hold back the waterfall of thoughts that surround it because this music will sound and feel different in a week, or a month, or a year.

"The First Days of Spring" was that to me, Noah and the Whale's second studio album, from 2009.  It's been one of the most important albums in my life, I think, since buying it nearly two years ago, when I was discovering a side to Noah and the Whale that wasn't happy ukulele pop or American influenced songs about dreams. It's been with me throughout both a minor heartbreak, then, one summer, a huge instance of grief that is still present every day.

Noah and the Whale's second release is a record about losing someone. A classic break-up album, you might say, and some quick Googling can take you straight to what, or who, it is written about. The beautiful concept film they directed, which is above, leaves plenty of puzzle pieces - Charlie Fink unashamedly wears his heart on his sleeve, a process of cleansing through music. But to the listener, of course, it doesn't have to be about losing a lover: it is loss through death, loss of a friend, or anything about the process of grieving someone, or something. I am a firm believer that music doesn't have a strict, universal meaning, set by the person who wrote it: once it's released it has a life.

This album opens with title track, "The First Days of Spring", bittersweet and orchestral and so melancholy, celebrating new life with a restrained desperation and sorrow within it. There's a moment of soft plucking between two notes, tremouring strings until everything just bursts free, filling skies.

It contains some of the saddest, hardest songs to listen to I know. "I Have Nothing" and "My Broken Heart" are beautifully minimal, straight from the heart, it's almost uncomfortable how in touch and unashamed their writer is of being so profoundly sad.

I don't really like to make completely personal links when I'm writing about music, because it's so much bigger than what it just means to me. But "Our Window" was there with me the night I sat on my roof in a blanket, looking out at all of the stars. I couldn't be at the hospital to see him with the rest of my family. Someone had to stay behind. There wasn't room in the car.

But, as much of a heartbreak record that it is there are moments of pure joy - "Instrumental I" sounds so playful, the sounds of an orchestra warming up and coming together "Love of an Orchestra" twinkles up and down in scales, sounds like gleefully running through dreams and contains one of my favourite lyrics of all time: "I know I'll never be lonely: I've got songs in my blood".

Regretful "Stranger" and "Slow Glass", which is cooler, harder, angrier - both portray the later, more bitter and hardened and confused stages of being left alone.

"Blue Skies" is that constant that the whole record leads up to, a song that contains only four chords yet surrounds you like an ether, creates so much noise whilst being so quiet and restrained. It pads into place very gently; you don't realise it's creeping up on you. Earlier songs sample lines of its melody, sometimes in a minor key instead. Like so many of the songs on this record, guitar and strings cushion and dazzle around the edges, but the heart of this song is the percussion - this was recorded at a time when Charlie Fink's brother, Doug, was still the band's drummer.

"My Door Is Always Open", the last track is another stand-out, starting out with simply the soft flutters of a guitar and Fink's Lou Reed-esque voice, building up to a gorgeous harmonic round of:
"I'll love with my heart, and I'll hold with my hands,
but you know, my heart's not yours."

This album is so incredible because it is a human being raising their hands and dropping their pride and saying "I am full of sorrow." It doesn't hold any conclusion, any magic remedy, and it doesn't claim to. It's the loss of a person from someone's life and its effects, the feelings of having explored every contour and every edge of the hole that they left behind. And when the hole's been nestled through to the other side, as well as all the despair, what's present is, as Fitzgerald would say is, "An extraordinary gift for hope".