Think Top of the Pops circa 1970; an awkwardly well dressed group of gentlemen from Twickenham have come to perform a selection of wonderful folk pop tunes for us and spread some English cheer across the country. Noah and the Whale are currently touring with 2011 UK Gold album Last Night on Earth, and I doubt anybody would have challenged the idea to put the band on the iTunes bill.
Unfortunately the best part of the show is over before the band arrive onstage; a spectacularly vintage set appears in front of us under lights that dance to a brass arrangement of Queen’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, the vocals are provided enthusiastically by the crowd. We are then greeted by the band and they move swiftly into their set, hoping that an hour and a quarter of their lovely guitar folk will top possibly the best song ever crafted.
The band are exquisitely tight, which is nice but detracts from the honest lilt that one looks for in this style of music. From this first observation I see that the band are a lot more pop than folk. Don’t even mention rock. This is also visible in their crisp presentation and in lead singer, Charlie Fink’s beanpole posture (though his legs are affected by a slight wobble when the music reaches a climactic point). Fink frustrates me, he asks for our fists in the air like an air hostess for a fastened seatbelt and announces the “party” part of the show like there’s ‘20 minutes to landing’. His low warble needs the rest of the band’s quite brilliant higher harmonies to break its inertia. My final point of irritation is that the band seemed to be performing solely for the satisfaction of the audience it was only in the final instrumental build of the night that you got the sense, that the musicians were losing themselves in their craft. Music is there as a higher form of communication and expression and it’s sad to see a band sacrificing this potential for crowd satisfaction.
Not to be misunderstood, I enjoy Noah and The Whale. I would be rather happy to have their album tinkering out of the speakers in this Camden Starbucks, I’ll even pull friends onto the dance-floor if I hear one of my favourites, Five Years Time, played in a club. However, at a concert I want to hear passion, pain, power and pride, not that “It’s the first day of spring” and “The trees grow, the rivers flow”.