Thoughts on "Noah and the Whale - The First Days of Spring"

I was amazed, while watching deal or no deal the other day, to see an advert for Noah and the Whale. The band, who to me had always been a one hit wonder (with "5 Years Time"), appeared to have taken the critics by storm with their second album.

I decided to take a risk and buy it, largely because my girlfriend offered to pay. To my joy and surprise "The First Days of Spring" turned out not only to be a million miles away from the twee folk-pop of their debut, but actually a breath taking and intimate break up album. It was made even more personal by its featured break up, between singer Charlie Fink and solo singersongwriter Laura Marling.

The album opens with the first glimmer of hope in Charlie's eyes, the idea that spring brings new opportunity. But just as winter surely follows summer, so do hard times as the album flows. The lyrics, while occasionally predictable and cliche are so raw and matter of fact that they evoked in me an image of Laura sat listening to the album for the first time. It feels like the singer is reaching out to touch Laura, and in doing so accidently touching us too.

The story is told expertly, perhaps better than any break up album before, both lyrically and musically. A brief restitative in track two ("Our Window") that comes back as the focus in the albums break through moment ("Blue Skies") and the albums crest and trough nature shows that recovering from trauma is never as simple as an arching crescendo back to happiness.

Altogether the album is wide and expansive, but sometimes chokingly claustrophobic and personal. Indeed, Charlie seems to choke on his words as several points during his subtle and restrained vocal performance. There are no sickly harmonies and sunny refrains in this album. Strings, brass and timpani compete with reverb heavy, lightly disorted guitars that echo of early Sigur Ros without ever leaving very british shores and reaching the sky.

To call it ambitious is to miss the point (here's looking at you Mojo) it is intensely personal, and like all good music is meant as much for the creator as the listener. While the music is complicated, atmospheric and scrupulously put together I feel there was no ambition in its writing, save to get its message across, which it does beautifully.

Music should influence politics, not the other way round

Eurovision song contest, one of the bigger non-events in our music calendar has never been hailed as the be all and end all of great song writing and performance. Yet has always held a place in our hearts that I doubt will ever fade, largely due to the eclectic tunes and short skirts. However, a little bit more leg every year does not stop me hating the night that bit more every time I watch it.

The dreadful acts we as a nation put forward aside, there is a typical ... European flavour to it that leaves a very bitter taste in my mouth. It seems more an exercise in bullying that musical scholarship. The French never give us anything because we don't eat the frogs legs they insist on shipping over (and because we whipped their ASSES at Waterloo), Russia don't give the west anything because they aren't over the Cold War, the Eastern Bloc only give Russia points because twenty years ago if they didn't they were shot and Ireland only give us some because then we might give them Northern Ireland back. Terry Wogan predicted six months ago that Russia would win thanks to the Eastern bloc, and for an old guy, he couldn't have been more right.

It's not a new idea that music and politics are intertwined, but for me this intertwining is becoming a problem. Music used to speak out against political, cultural and ethnic division, and indeed in most quarters does, but when it comes to the most watched musical event of the year, it becomes a symbol of national rivalry and political discrimination. It relates to outdated, geopolitical ties that should have been left for dead after the Cold War. Good lord people, half of the viewers weren't even born until the Soviet union collapsed, so how is it still relevant now? Are Russia really going to stop your nations gas supply because you voted fairly in the Eurovision Song Contest?! Call me sensationalist, but how can we call ourselves a civilised and united continent when we can't even have some light hearted competition in the name of musical furtherment without pointing the finger at the capitalists? I think most of Europe knows that on Saturday night we put out one of the best songs and yet were compared, unfavourably, to the most woeful attempts at music ever (here's looking at you Bosnia) and left languishing with Germany, the black hole of popular music, in last place.

A small scale resolution is obviously to stop semi-finalists voting, as the great Wogan suggests, which would leave the Bloc voting less powerful a force. But is that really the problem, or is it that when it comes to popular culture classroom we are the geek with glasses and freckles who no one wants to talk to? If we are, just remember Europe, Derren Brown was that guy, and no he can fuck people's minds up on TV for money. Yeah, you better watch it.

Selling out is the new...Not selling out.

There is a lot of hate in the music industry. To quote the great (!?) Charlie Simpson "Fans take as much pride in hating bands as liking them." It may be a sweeping generalization, but in my experience people, and indeed reviewers, find and cling (sometimes correctly) to any reason at all to hate bands without ever alluding to their music.

Of course sometimes you don't need to. A band that doesn't write its own music rarely deserves the success it gains. In today's industry, where songwriters are ten a penny, many talented musicians are pushed out of the limelight by bands like Westlife, who can quite frankly screw themselves with a rusty spoon and get tetanus.

But all too often I find respectable, talented musicians lumped in with the tripe of boy and girl bands. I'm talking of supposed "Sell Outs" who are claimed to be in it for the money or fame, not the music, simply because they sign to major labels, or start writing more accessible music.

An excellent example is Greenday, no longer sub-level punk rock heroes but world arena superstars, who "sold out" in 1994 by signing to a major, and then somehow again when they released American Idiot. While it was a departure in many ways I think that the album was superior lyrically, emotively, musically and productionally to all their previous records. What is more, the songs on this album, to me, are less catchy and accessible than anthems like Basket Case, Longview or Time Of Your Life.

There seems to have been a movement against corporate music, magazines and labels since Bob Dylan's controversial move from acoustic to electric, which alienated half his fans who believed he was bowing to commercial and progressional pressures.

But the whole notion is absurd, contradictory and completely self destructive for artists. Had Nirvana not signed to Sub Pop (a label half owned by Universal) we would probably have never heard of one of the most influential artists of our time, and the Foo Fighters may have never existed. Of course Kurt Cobain is famous for hating the popular culture lifestyle he was forced to live. Had he been able to embrace it maybe things would have been different for Nirvana.

Money aside, major labels offer an opportunity for musical exposure that few (actually independent) indie labels could even hope to create. They offer advertising campaigns, contacts and placement that can bring an artist right to the public eye. It also creates profits that reflect the talent and work that goes into being in the music industry. Why is it that for an artist to have integrity they must earn a small wage packet and be heard by as few people as possible, or stick to the music or genre they started in?

I maintain that the hardest music to write is commercial music, and in particular commercial music that doesn't sound like everything else on the radio. This does therefore not include the mind-numbing-music-murdering number ones that Westlife or Atomic Kitten churn out. I'm talking about bands like Feeder and Coldplay, songwriters like Gary Barlow and innovators like Matt Bellamy, who despite their vast wealth seem to lose respect of the "elite" the more popular they get, but have offered so much more to music than many of the bands NME claim will "Change your life".

I saw Muse at Wembley, largely because Biffy Clyro we playing, and was completely and utterly blown away by the talent, variety and sheer technical ability Matt Bellamy, and the whole band, showed during their monster 2.5 hour set. And still by many Muse are seen as this over-hyped, overly successful band (type "I hate Muse" into google and you'll see) when I think they will be seen as one of the greats of our era, and for years to come.

Thankfully this notion of "selling out" is slowly disappearing. The creation of iTunes, myspace and illegal p2p software has meant that smaller bands get better exposure, reducing the polarization of the big and the little bands. Bands like Biffy Clyro and System of a Down have managed top twenty SINGLES, and this will hopefully give rise to the pushing out of watered-down R'n'B and manufactured pop artists.

In fact everyone is now selling out, with bigger turnovers, TV ads and interviews, being heard by more people and being branded as commercial without the derogartory insinuations. Downloads mean charts are more accurate representations of music consumption and many indie labels are being brought out, offering new opportunities to their bands.

Music is more and more accessible, but in so many ways the cloud of musical snobbery that surrounds so many genres is yet to clear, even now that the boundaries are gone. We can't all like pop, or rock, or rap but we can at least accept and applaud the achievements of musicians in their areas whether they make money from it or not.

The WHY!? Factor

I think we all know how we all feel about The X Factor. If "A Clockwork Orange" had been written forty years later I feel sure that Alex Delarge would have been forced to watch it. But while the fact that it is on television haunts me every night, I do get a good chuckle out of the fact that it won Best Comedy Entertainment Programme over Jonathan Ross at the British Comedy Awards in 2005.

The thing is, I always used to watch it and I can't for the life of me work out why. The auditions are of course hilarious, Simon Cowell's sheer ego a marvel to behold and the audience wonderfully cringing. But now, even the joy that is Dannii Minogue can't hold my attention. And it's because of all the people in this year's competition, not ONE of them has real talent. 200,000 people auditioned, and here we are now with seven either plain, plain bad or unoriginal artists. Is this really the best the UK can come up with?

I can hear the cry's of angered girls who watch the show, drinking lambrini before hitting town on a Saturday. "What about Rhydian?!" The man has no variation, his Pink cover was laughable and the way he smiles he could be Satan himself having a go at pop. Beverly is obviously just going to produce an album of Whitney and Aretha Franklin covers. Hope, aside from having the worst band name ever, are simply leggy, made up girls who can sing in tune. Also can someone tell the tall black one not to wear heels when the rest of the band are a foot shorter…?

But it is the presence of "Same Difference" that most agitates me. Not only does it scream of a brother-sister relationship with a lot of, shall we say … secrets, they are cringingly plain and boring, and it causes me physical pain to watch. The fact that their selected songs come from Steps, S Club 7 and High School Musical is a testament to the fact that they should be singing at Haven or Butlins, or worse the Eurovision Song Contest.

But let's not get me started on that monstrosity.