Noah and The Whale – Manchester Academy 29/09/09

At first when I walked into the Academy, 14-year-old sister in tow, I felt extremely old. The front row was full of teenage girls and their mums, probably there to hear ‘that song from last summer’. However, I was so giddy about watching Noah and the Whale that this paled into insignificance. First Days Of Spring is allegedly a concept album about the ending of singer Charlie Fink’s relationship with folk chanteuse Laura Marling, so I was pretty excited about how it was going to come across.

By the time the support act came on, the crowd had thankfully doubled in size and seemingly in age as well. Sean Rowe was excellent; beautiful, folksy Americana-infused guitar songs don’t come much better than from a man with a growly voice.

Noah and the Whale opened with the very safe ‘Give A Little Love’, followed by ‘Blue Skies’. When Charlie Fink sings, he looks as if he means every word that comes out of his mouth, and teamed with the backdrop music provided by the rest of the band, it basically sounded like perfection.

It’s obvious that Noah and the Whale have done a lot of growing up since their first album. Even a surprise rendition of happy-clappy ‘song from last summer’ ‘5 Years’ Time’ sounds as if it’s drenched in melancholy- but in a very good way. There were even a couple of moments when I found myself crying, much to the amusement of my sister. ‘Stranger’, hard enough to listen to at the best of times on record, took on whole new levels of ‘tearjerker’ when you could hear the croak in Fink’s voice as he sang “Because everything I love has gone away.”

Happy times came in the form of an extremely lively rendition of ‘Love Of An Orchestra’. When you listen to it through your headphones, it sounds a bit like a joke… live, it sounds both brilliant and hilarious all at once, and it was a fabulous aside from all the dour subject matter. ‘The hits’, for fans of old, included ‘Jocasta’ and ‘Shape of My Heart’, much to the joy of the little girls at the front.

All too soon it was going-home time, but not without an encore. ‘My Broken Heart’ was the perfect set closer in my opinion, even if half the audience didn’t know it. Now, Noah and the Whale aren’t a band famous for ‘rocking out’. Nay, you would imagine that their idea of said ‘rocking out’ would be to add an extra fiddle into a song or something. This song proves that to be a misconception, with one of the finest examples of wah-pedal style blues guitar that I have ever heard. And tonight, they made it extra fabulous by playing a special extended version. Everyone was left speechless as the lights came up, followed by many exclamations in the vein of “Bloody hell that was good!”