"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".

Recommendations: March 2013

At the start of last month, I was in London for an event called Moxafrica, hosted by the Telegraph's Neil McCormick, to raise funds for tuberculosis solutions in third world countries. It brought together some incredible artists, some up and coming like Bo Bruce and Buckshot Soup, and others that have already expienced large scale success: David Gray, Gabriella Cilmi,  those you hear of and remember songs you loved. As well as it being a great cause, I got to hang out with friends I've met through Twitter and through this blog, which is strange and magical and makes me incredibly happy, because people are lying when they tell you the internet is a waste of time.

I spent St Patrick's Day losing all my dignity, an incredibly "mainstream" evening as my friend put it - appropriately enough, I went to hear Irish rock-pop balladeers The Script grace the MEN, a night of catchy love songs and happiness.

Other things I bought, heard, loved:

"Moranthology" - Caitlin Moran

This book is collection of  Times columnist Caitlin Moran's best work - she is "the first journalist to prove Lady Gaga isn't a man". Musings on music, travel, hair, and an incredible meeting with Paul McCartney, Caitlin is sassy, smart, hilarious and inspires me no end.

"The Next Day" - David Bowie
It's safe to say I'm going through a bit of a Bowie phrase. I lost my Labyrinth-watching virginity today, better late than ever, it is bizarre and insane and perfect. His new album "The Next Day" is a perfect continuation of his career. I love the sound of his voice now, the audible sense of his having aged, grizzly and soft, yet this album makes connections to his older work whilst still managing to be gorgeously refreshing and unobvious. Lyrically, it's a complete adventure. "The Stars Are Out Tonight" and "Dancing Out in Space" are personal favourites of mine.

Piccadilly Records, Manchester
I spend a lot of time in Manchester but had never been here until stumbling across it a few weeks ago, which was such an uplifting surprise after finding out that same day the main HMV over there is closing. This little shop seems untouched by the death of physical CD crisis, and it's run with so much love and care. Browsing through their shelves, each album has a little hand-written note with a description, an opinion. Chances are, they won't have what you came in looking for. And chances are, before you leave, something else will find you.

"There Will Come A Time" - Noah and the Whale
The first taste from Noah and the Whale's fourth studio album, to be released in May, shows a continuation from the less folk-driven and more American influences of 2011's "Last Night on Earth". A simple  chord progression, it is cheerfully refreshing and nostalgic, "There will come a time when you will need your friends, tonight." Check out their website for upcoming tour details.

The Magic Numbers

... played at the event in Islington I talked about, a band I used to listen to a lot when I was younger. They are two pairs of siblings, making rock-pop that is very much driven by voice and harmony, which transfers beautifully onto a live setting. "Morning's Eleven" is a great one of theirs if you haven't listened to them before.

An Oppositional Reading

"An Oppositional Reading." A term everyone uses quite a lot in my Media Studies class, meaning the consumer of a text has a completely different interpretation of the meaning behind the text that its producer intended (as opposed to the more obvious interpretation, the Preferred Reading). It's often because of religion, sexuality, lifestyle choices, or perhaps most importantly, personal experience.

The example of this I remember from class is two people having an argument about James Blunt's song "Goodbye My Lover". The first argues the Preferred Reading - "This song is about someone going through a breakup."
But the second says, "I know why you think that, but it's actually about somebody who stepped on an insect and they're really guilty about it."
Obviously "Goodbye My Lover" isn't about an insect at all, but this person has a really traumatic experience and they're so desperate to find something to relate it to that they grab at the nearest thing to find similarity and comfort in.

The insect thing is a really bad example, but this whole theory is really interesting to me, especially as a music fan and somebody who often tries to find things within the lyrics of a song. The problem with the example above is that it makes it seem as if any Oppositional Reading is obvious, obscure and insane, which isn't the case. Thinking about it, I realised people have them all the time.

A few months ago, my dad was starting to like Noah and the Whale, one of my favourite bands, and we would listen to them a lot when it was just him and me in the car, and his favourite song of theirs was "Tonight's the Kind of Night". I remember one of the first things he said about it was, "It's about a boy leaving home to go to university."

It made me smile. I can see where he's coming from, "Tonight's the Kind of Night" talks of a young boy getting on a bus to leave. "Tonight's the kind of night where everything could change." "He waves goodbye to the town he grew up him, he knows that he'll never go back." "Tonight he's not gonna come back home." "His heart is full of perfect joy, his eyes begin to flood." He's going away from where he's always lived, moving away from his parents and his family, and it's an adventure.

My dad grew up in Bolton, an area that was quite a tight-knit community, and left there at eighteen to go to university and from what I know I think he loved it there: he met some of his current best friends there, did really well in his degree, was in a band etc.

Him leaving to go and live in Coventry is easily relatable to "Tonight's the Kind of Night", because it's about a boy of age eighteen-ish leaving home, but if you think about it there's no reason he should think it's about going to university. It's either an easy assumption to make about somebody student-aged, or my dad just subconsciously applied this to himself and his memories.

I've done it myself, too. There's a song on Laura Marling's new record* called "The Beast". After I'd listened to it a few times I started to really focus on the lyrics, and I thought I'd found it and someone was finally talking about this thing that causes all of my guilt and rage. It's probably more complicated than that, it's difficult to explain because I don't understand it either - Poppy referred to this unexplainable negativity as my "monsters" before, and "The Beast" also seemed a good way to put at it. I really recognised the illustration of the guilt and dread as something that comes at night and lies beside you in bed, and that sometimes you submit to.

I've thought about it and she probably isn't referring to that, at least not specifically, and it's childish that the identification of what I thought was a common ground increased my love for Laura Marling's music. I think it's likely that "The Beast" is about similar feelings, but probably not that "snap!" exactness that I thought I'd found the first time around.

Does it mean we should stop listening to songs and applying them to our lives? Is an "Oppositional" reading any less of an interpretation? Of course not. That is one of the things music is for, a comfort blanket and a friend, a lifeline in the dark because somebody else has probably felt like this before.

I don't know who Imogen Heap wrote "Swoon" about, but I know who it will always have been about to me, the feelings it stirred in me, and for that I can give the song a name and a face. "The Beast" will still always be a description of someone having similar feelings to mine, "Tonight's the Kind of Night" makes my dad think of things that were happening to him when he was eighteen.

A song's story starts with the thing that happened or the person that it was written about, but once it's out in the world and provides a listener with emotion suddenly it's about them to and thousands of stories are unknowingly interlinked. I think that's an incredible representation of the music community. And that's why of course "Goodbye My Lover" by James Blunt is about a squashed insect.

*I hope nobody's counting how many times I've said "Laura Marling" in the past month...

All Is Fleeting

I had a solid idea of what I wanted to write about today, but I'll save it because right now it seems very important that I share this with you:



Charlie Fink and Laura Marling play "Give A Little Love" and "Alas I Cannot Swim" together in the back of a taxi. I think she must have been around seventeen at this time.

I put "Give A Little Love" on before purely for the lyric all is fleeting. A while before that I'd read something on someone's tumblr post about the value of life, and it made me feel quite guilty because of how I'd been thinking lately.

I turned it off because it was brilliant but didn't seem quite right, and it was the same when I saw Noah and the Whale on Thursday and they opened with "Give A Little Love". They're an amazing band live, passionate and energetic and open, but the first time I heard "Give A Little Love" was this video, and because of that I think of it a little differently.

I've found that with the community of music involving Laura Marling, Noah and the Whale and Mumford and Sons, all of who's music has become a part of my life these last few months - everybody seems to think they know quite a lot about their lives, specifically love-lives, during a certain time. I go between thinking it's interesting to listen to a song and have an idea who or what it is about, to thinking that it's possibly interferring and unhealthy to feel like we have access to this, or have opinions about who should or shouldn't still be together, things like that. These aren't people we know and they don't know us and it doesn't seem quite right.

But I think seeing this, it's okay to watch it with the feeling that this isn't a concert or a performance, not really, but two people in love and in coversation. Music is a platform for connection, not necessarily just for artist to fan, and music is a communion in many different ways. Charlie and Laura. Years ago, looking at each other and singing about how they feel.

So last week, on Wednesday, I went to see a band called Noah and the Whale.
It very nearly didn't happen - I was going to go with some friends from my Guides but it got quite short notice, then I was going to go with someone else who couldn't travel, and then on Sunday when I was talking to myself about how a different show near to us had sold out, my dad offered to go with me, which he does occasionally - he has the live music thing that I do too, but I think he's either learnt to control it or it isn't as important to him. See now I'm being judgemental.

My very first memory of Noah and the Whale music must have been in 2007 - that summer, I was eleven and on the way home from shopping with my mum and my friend when their song "Five Years Time" came on the radio. And I liked it because it made me happy - sometimes music could be that simple then, and I suppose it still can.

I don't remember thinking about their music much, except for singing "And it was fun, fun, fun..." in my head from time to time, up until last year, when because of a friend I listened to "Give A Little Love" and loved it, because of the way the chorus repeated itself in my head and how adaptable it's lyrics were.
And then, at a time that was just right for me personally, I came across "Blue Skies" ... the night I heard it for the first time, it was exactly what I needed.
Their most recent singles have been "L.I.F.E.G.O.E.S.O.N" and "Tonight's The Kind of Night", and I love both of them despite the new album, "Last Night On Earth" being so different... not better or worse, just different. I'd say there's a greater variety of instruments, it's also much more cheerful.

On Wednesday night we drove down to their show in Leeds. I had my GCSE French speaking exam the next day and went anyway, because I'm really responsible with my priorities, so I ended up having to revise the whole way. We were almost late for the show.

I won't talk about the support act just now.

The venue was a student union, so I was squished in with a lot of university students in their twenties, all of who I was weirdly taller than. And I love places like that... the way your legs ache from standing and you stop noticing after a while, your shoes are sticky with bear, you're sweating and it's dark and everyone around you feels what you do.

As the band were coming on, a melody called "Paraside Stars" was playing - I didn't know what it was at the time, I only bought "Last Night On Earth" this weekend - but I swear I felt it all of the way through my body, and that's why I love intimate venues.

They played "Give A Little Love" first and in the first few moments of it my thoughts sort of went...
guitarist, keyboard, drummer, violin
HAHA THEIR HAIR IS ALL AWESOME
woah they're playing this song that's so weird i thought it'd be i i i don't know omigod it's all beautifuuuuuulll
woah charlie fink is different in real life
his voice...

The second song I didn't know (I wish I'd bought "Last Night On Earth" before and not just known two songs from it!) but after that they played "Blue Skies".
And I remember these two guys close to me were drunk, singing loudly and dancing together, and usually it would've annoyed the hell out of me but for some silly reason it didn't.
Some audiences make me ashamed to be a part of - because they're too loud or rude, or too quiet and uninviting, but this was just right. It was the most responsive audience I've been a part of - the people around me were singing along with every line of every single song, and I just felt proud.

After this I'm forgetting the order, but I remember some time during the middle they played a song I didn't know called "Wild Thing", but was singing along with quickly as if I did, and it's funny because by now after hearing it more times my conception as to what the lyrics are about is nothing to do with what I thought then...

They played what Charlie called "the quiet romantic part of the set" - the slower songs, like "My Door Is Always Open" in one section of about three or four, and I thought that was an odd way to do things but I liked it.

He then announced, somewhat sarcastically, "Now this is the high energy dance party section of the show." And then opened this with "Roll Away Your Stone", which I was dancing to, and so was everyone around me. This is one of my favourites, and I missed Laura Marling's harmony less than I thought I would, mainly because the audience sang it too.

The only form of live performance I'd seen from them was just Charlie Fink and Laura Marling doing an acoustic set in the back of a cab - I'm tired, but look it up on Youtube - and it was so strange to me that then he seemed more nervous and reserved than in front of an entire crowd. He was probably one of the most charismatic performers I've seen - he would point with his finger whilst singing, as if addressing each of us personally, and constantly throw and catch the mic stand.
And the whole band were so vibrant and together and just excited to be playing, which is always a bonus. Every song they were perfectly in time with one another. It was just so lovely to see how much they looked like they were enjoying it.

"Five Years Time" was instantly recognisable and everyone did that thing when they realise and then cheer. It was one of my favourite moments of the entire show, because everyone in the room was singing along and halfway through "Urby" - the keyboard/ guitarist - was whilstling the refrain and I don't know why but it made me smile.

I love the gradual pace and rise in "Tonight's The Kind Of Night" and the live performance was perfect. They played after that a song called "First Day of Spring" I hadn't heard, because I only have the first album, but it was beautiful. That one was their "last song" and after that they came back on and played "L.I.F.E.G.O.E.S.O.N" as an encore, and the only footage I have is a 16 second crappy phone clip of the whole audience singing along, calling out "L.I.F.E.G.O.E.S.O.N!" like it was all they believed in.
You can see that one here.

I sort of wanted to wait outside afterwards but didn't, because I had an exam the next day. I honestly think it went okay butif I failed, there's an oppurtunity to retake it in two weeks and I won't regret spending that night away from it all even a tiny bit.