Last Night on Earth

Noah And The Whale never rejects deep thoughts and vital issues

Appearing in London several years ago the indie-band Noah And The Whale drew attention to itself in no time. Its singles 5 Years Time and 2 Bodies, 1 Heart conquered the audience with soulful warmness, beautiful metaphoric texts. The British band’s music has always surprised with the combination of lyrics full of love, joy, friendship and simple celebration of life, and of some magic instrumentation and vocals. This is exactly what characterizes their 2008’s romantic debut album Peaceful, The World Lays Me Down refined with beautiful interlacements of male and female vocals. The sophomore effort, The First Day of Spring was released the following year already and proved to be absolutely different – it was a conceptual album fully devoted to breakup, filled with a marvelous light sadness, female vocals being absent. Expressing all the departing grief on that album Charlie Fink and the company have written new, life-affirming and vivid songs of which the musicians’ third album Last Night On Earth is comprised to make this spring more colorful. The previous creation’s slow, sullenly melancholic melodies have given way to the lively, rhythmic compositions, yet not devoid of deep thoughts and vital issues, otherwise it would not be a Noah And The Whale’s album.

New mood on Last Night On Earth

The fact is simple: if you compare the previous and the new album you might think that they are different bands’ creations: though both of them can boast splendid arrangements, their moods are completely varied. Last Night On Earth opens with an amazingly contagious synthesizer composition Life Is Life, on which you are not about to hear unexpected rhymes, its text is extremely simple and predictable which makes its sounding even lighter. Even more impetuous drums and keyboards on Tonight Is The Kind Of Night are going to conquer you to no lesser extent than its positive message – there is no need making life more complicated, one just needs to know that every day can bring changes. The single L.I.F.E.G.O.E.S.O.N. is one of the most melodious songs on the record, filled with dense lyrics, bass drumming, some layers of vocals on chorus and handsome guitar parts. The slow space track Wild Thing is one of the few that remind of the band’s previous work: it offers a bit of melancholy, a marvelous electronic arrangement and Fink’s vocals sounding lower than usual. One can easily dance listening to Give It All Back – the contagious marimba and light drum work perform their task perfectly well, and the string ensemble and electronic hooks on Just Before We Met make this number one of the most original on the album. The beautiful, a minute and a half long instrumental Paradise Stars slows the tempo down, but the jokingly smiling Waiting For My Chance To Come never allows the listener to fall asleep. The reflective The Line once again arises sadness and nostalgia, and the album closer is the gentle ballad Old Joy, built around keyboard chords, choir backing vocals and drawling electronic effects.

Very lively, sometimes even danceable compositions

The audience always requires a lot from successful musicians – each new album is supposed to be different from the previous one, but the risk of disappointing it with unexpected experiments is always too high. Noah And The Whale seems to be aware of that much better than the others. All of its three albums have proved to be different, but they are united by quite interesting lyrics and rich arrangements. At the same time the guys never repeat their thoughts, always manage to find new successful combinations of sonic effects, nevertheless, all their songs are easily recognizable. Of course, Charlie Fink’s vocals play the role far from the least important – his rich velvet, wide-ranging voice never disappears behind powerful instrumentation, and the general view always results to be quite impressive. As for the record Last Night On Earth, all these characteristics are present on it to a full extent. Besides, it can boast very lively, sometimes even danceable compositions, making up a good contrast with the slightly dismal and monotonous previous work. The album Last Night On Earth consists of ten tracks, lasts for only half an hour and can be listened to at one breath. Hopefully, Noah And The Whale continues its tradition of not leaving the studio for much too long, and we can be soon waiting for a new surprise.