Noah And The Whale - Peaceful, The World Lays Me Down

When people mention ‘twee’, I usually frown, shudder, and think of herbal tea drinking twats, in garish cardigans and wellingtons knitting scarves and mittens. But Noah And The Whale have given me a whole new perspective on this. The album isn't so much ‘twee’ in the sense that they're a bunch of scarf knitting twats, but more in the sense that at times there's a lot of happiness, pleasantness and buoyancy in the tunes, but the difference is that below it all is a dark anti-folk undercurrent, with many of the unhappier songs dealing with death and unrequited love. Basically, it's not all bunnies and fucking toffee apples, it's more like a twee Arcade Fire, with the clever lyric and intelligent punnery of Bright Eyes. I love songwriters who can not only write the most basic and catchiest of choruses, but also a writer who can spend forever ripping up scraps of A4 until they have the perfect one liners for their stanza's. And that's what's going on here. The lyrics have so much meaning, they've clearly had so much thought go into them, with 5 Years Time being the type of earnest love song in the spirit of Peter, Bjorn And John’s Young Folk, which would be a massive summer hit in an alternate universe. Some of the initial twee-ness may put you off, but they write and perform desperately profound indie-pop which can’t help but make you smile and marvel at the whimsical wordplay.

4.5/5


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