[none]Live Review: Noah & The Whale,
Young & Lost Club Tour: Thekla, Bristol
With Friends Of The Bride and Naked And The Boys
Wednesday 6th February 2008
By Meg Rowell
Formed in 2004 by friends Nadia Dahlawi and Sara Jade, the Young & Lost Club record label has been responsible for kick-starting the careers of such notable bands as Vincent Vincent and the Villains, Good Shoes, Pull Tiger Tail and, of course, tonight's headliners, the irresistibly named Noah & The Whale.
Despite running a regular club night in London, which, over the last four years, has hosted the likes of The Horrors, Jamie T, Klaxons and Jack Penate, this is the label's first ever tour, bringing a hungry Bristol crowd some of the capital's finest new talents.
First up tonight are Naked And The Boys, a group who, on first listen, may come across as middle of the road indie but, on closer inspection, are actually a young band of immense musical talent. Their song-writing skitters around the edges of folk, country and blues, and their inter-band rapport and immense likeability is untouchable. Vocalist Jack Berkeley is a highly gifted song-smith with such an affable, fragile air to him you almost want to sit him down and make him tea once he's done pouring out his heart. If I'm honest, their music isn't really my thing, but when a band plays really well together, as Naked And The Boys undoubtedly do, it doesn't really matter what sound they actually make. There's such a joyous feeling emanating from the stage that you can't help but be drawn in, only to be spat out three minutes later feeling curiously happier.
In stark contrast to the youthful grace of Naked And The Boys, fellow Londoners Friends Of The Bride come bounding on stage like a bunch of rockabilly rogues; all smart and slick on the outside but utterly foul-mouthed on the inside. Their music is an indecipherable mix of fifties rock'n'roll, seventies surf-pop and punkish indie, a kind of Franz Ferdinand meets The Horrors with a few nods to the good old days of nineties Brit Pop. Frontman Bobby Grindrod is as suave and sleazy as they come and Young & Lost Club single You Think You Can Dance gets the, until now, static crowd twisting and jiving like it was 1963.
When London five-piece Noah & The Whale finally make it on stage, the audience suddenly swells to capacity. Having recently supported Broken Social Scene on tour and with the recent success of singer Laura Marling's solo career, Noah & The Whale have some high expectations to live up to.
Starting their set with the tremulous Peaceful The World Lays Me Down, it's plain to see that it's frontman Charlie Fink who carries this band, his penetrating voice bearing simple songs of love and loss across layers of folkish instrumentation, his vocal chords and heartfelt outpourings burying deep into the listeners' soul, displaying a sense of old-man wisdom far beyond his youthful years.
At this point, it's easy, almost lazy, to compare Fink to contemporary alt-folksters such as Adam Green, Jeffrey Lewis and Will Oldham, but, as he sings the lines 'Be willing to be hurt, Oh, be willing to be bruised, 'Cos a heart that doesn't love, Is a heart that isn't used...' you can't help but make the connection. His barren voice carries that familiar mournful resignation to all of life's woes and tracks such as Beaten are straight out of the Smog school of songwriting; painfully direct, strangely joyful and brutally monotonous.
All too quickly, it's time for the final track of the night, the slow-starting Rocks And Daggers, which teeters delicately on the edge of tweeness, before the whole band springs into life on the furious finale, Marling's vocals carrying it along with a burning, voracious ferocity, as it explodes into an energetic country and western hoedown, punctuated briefly by Fink's sorrowful laments.
As expected, the crowd want more and so they return with Five Year's Time, a calypso inspired track, like David Byrne singing The Moldy Peaches, complete with it's very own dance moves as demonstrated rather begrudgingly, but sweetly, by Marling.
The Young & Lost Club have done themselves proud with tonight's offerings, Naked And The Boys have a great future ahead of them and Friends Of The Bride are a refreshing change from the norm, but for me, tonight, it's Noah & The Whale who should give themselves the heartiest pat on the back.
For more details about Noah & The Whale, including any forthcoming tour dates, see their page here on Ents24.
