Send "Noah And The Whale " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Nme |
 As concept albums go, a trudge through the aftermath of a break-up hardly makes for a tale as fantastical as ‘Tommy’ or ‘The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars’, but even so, ‘The First Days Of Spring’ is a story we could listen to again and again.Noah And The Whale might have hijacked last summer with ‘Five Years Time’ – which was lovely the first few times you heard it, but the hundredth listen kinda made you want to build a wicker whale, fill it with all the recorders in Britain and take a blowtorch to it – but now is the time for forgiveness. The band have changed their tune to that of a sunny swoon, filled with regret, pain, poignant optimism and fewer zany instruments. The six-minute-plus title track sets the unhurried pace, with spiralling, blockbusting indie-folk that’s big on the cinematics; handy, seeing as, like Tommy and Ziggy, there is also a film to accompany the whole record. Mournful but shot through with hope, the song’s echoes of ’80s troubadour Lloyd Cole crescendo into a chamber-pop odyssey that could stop Arcade Fire in their tracks....full text |
| Guardian |
| Poor Charlie Fink. His south London band, formed with his brother and some mates, features two girls on vocals. Both leave to do their own thing: Emmy The Great to make music with her own band, Laura Marling to become a Mercury-listed singer-songwriter and one of the hits of 2008. But part of Marling's success is down to Charlie - he produced Alas, I Cannot Swim. He was also her boyfriend. Double-pleased. Noah & the Whale The First Days of Spring Mercury £12.72 2009 Then Laura chucked him. So Charlie Fink goes away. As his heart plummets his imagination soars. Soon his reflections on love and loss will find form in an album and accompanying film. Both will be called The First Days Of Spring. One song, a folk-blues lament with tear-dripping brass, is called My Broken Heart ("I saw my world cave in"). Another, I Have Nothing, begins with a choir humming and rain falling. The film is unveiled at the Latitude festival next weekend. It will, I suspect, be wonderful. This is a beautiful album. Moving rather than maudlin, uplifting rather than depressing. Instrumental #1, all strings and brass and piano, is like the overture to a David Lean epic, not least because it leads straight into the mighty, hot-stepping, choir-driven Love Of An Orchestra. "This is the love song that I write while still in love with you," Fink sings over booming drums, and more choral backing vocals oh the standout Blue Skies. Next to the irresistible-yet-twee-ish indie-pop of last year's Top 10 summer hit 5 Years, he's upped his game quicksmart....full text |
| Drownedinsound |
| For those who thought Noah and The Whale’s first offering was mellow, I present to you First Days of Spring; making its predecessor look like an up-tempo dance mix by comparison. If these are the first days of spring, then Peaceful, The World Lays Me Down was some sort of midsummer’s party. Ensnaring the listener from the off, it's a strikingly sparse and minimal record, yet rousingly epic at the same time. This is music for the movies, no doubt, and you find yourself directing a small scale production as images move through your mind. It’s not much of a surprise to learn that First Days of Spring is in fact part of a bigger whole - a joint effort combining the full album’s music with a film for release on DVD. Whether this counts as a cunning move or a poorly-thought out plan is up for debate in these multimedia times where the world is multiplatform and the shuffle function destroys any sense of album as ‘complete package’. But either way, Noah and the Whale embrace the USP and bring to the table something more than most of their counterparts....full text |
Noah And The Whale lyrics
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