Live Review: Noah and the Whale – Shepherd’s Bush Empire

admin on Mar 8th 2009

Noah and the Whale are after an audience much bigger than they scored with their top 5 debut, Peaceful, The World Lays Me Down. The first hint is that they’ve given the sound behind that album a complete overhaul: the ukuleles are nowhere in sight, a new guitarist has been brought in to beef up the arrangements and any element of cartoonish jubilation has been smothered out.

Tonight’s show, part of their Cinema Silencio tour, seems designed to give everyone a chance to get used to the change – particularly the parents of screaming eight-year-olds who have squeezed into a sold out show to hear flawless recreations of the songs that won their hearts last summer.

The night begins with Jay Jay Pistolet, whose excellent Happy Birthday You EP was produced by Noah frontman Charlie Fink, using an antique record player to perform his handful of tracks in Karaoke mode. In the background, a series of film shorts establish the Cinema Silencio’s aesthetic for the rest of the evening : velvet curtains, red telephones, and a dancing giant in a darkened room.

But apart from indulging Noah and the Whale’s obvious admiration for the David Lynch, it also serves as an appropriate setting for the new material. All those expecting desperately cute sing-alongs full of hand claps and whistles are instead met with the brooding, electrified soundl of a band who seem to have designs on emulating the likes of Coldplay.

The shift is surprisingly convincing: the older songs have been reworked to fit seamlessly in between the muscular arrangements from their forthcoming album, First Days Of Spring (due in June). One exception is the makeover they give Five Years Time, their breakout single and the track that the younger sections of the crowd have been calling out for all night. The vocals remain the same, but little else. So when Fink urges the crowd to quieten down, it seems like this bid to be taken more seriously is being forced rather than eased in.

If it goes to plan, expect to see the band trotting out on even bigger stages during the summer festivals, but fear not: though they may be growing up quicker than some may want them to, the songs are still steeped in love and loss… They just sound that little bit less chipper.