Heart of Nowhere-Noah and The Whale (2013)

I must admit that Noah and the Whale intrigued me right from the start of their career. They first drifted over the horizon and onto my radar with the insidiously catchy single, 5 years time. We are talking about the spring of 2008, gentle reader, and these were the days before nu-folk ruled the musical landscape like it does now, before the nations coffee tables were burdened by albums by Laura Marling (More of which later), The Lumineers, Ben Howard and, of course Bumford & Sons (I'm sorry, I promised I would try and be mature when referring to this execrable bunch of buffoons, I must try harder). Noah and the Whale, therefore, sounded somewhat out of place and this was an impression confirmed by the arrival of their debut album, Peaceful, the World Lays Me Down. They certainly didn't sound anything like the "Landfill Indie" that was all over the gaff at the time (Scouting for Girls, Pigeon Detectives, Fratellis, Hoosiers, step forward, take a bow and then bugger off out of it!). On the first few listens,it sounded like a twee Arcade Fire (If such a thing can be imagined).

Anyway I then learnt that Charlie Fink (And frankly that is a GREAT name!), the lead singer and main songwriter was going out with the lady who provided many of the backing vocals for the album, Laura Marling and apparently both Noah (plus, presumably, Whale) and Laura were prominent among the burgeoning (A word much used by music journalists to describe something that they claim is about to be very popular but you have never heard of) "nu folk" scene.

Now, lovely people, this came as a large shock to me. I had never had heard of said scene (probably because it was "burgeoning"). Furthermore, the whole concept puzzled me because the idea that these young folk (Dreadful pun intended) thought they were going to make a few bob out of folk music was beyond ludicrous. Now at this point I must state that  I will freely admit that I am a bit of a fan of certain types of folk music (A subject I will no doubt return to in future blogs). However as far as the vast majority of the British Public were concerned I thought that the word "Folk" conjured up other words such as "Hey Nonny Nonny", "Beards" "Wooly Jumpers" "Fairport Convention" and "Songs about Death", none of which lead one to the conclusion that there was a lucrative career in making this sort of music, "nu" or otherwise.

Then things started to happen...well for Laura they did in any case. Her debut album, "Alas I cannot Swim" (Nasty people such as R.Marsh thought it should have been called "Alas I cannot Sing") was nominated for the Mercury Prize. It was a busy time in Laura's life because she split up with Charlie and started to going out with one Maurice Mumford, the somewhat portly singer of Dumford and sons (No still can't do it), who were also part of the "nu folk" massive (only obviously at this time they were still playing venues the size of toilets along the M25 corridor rather than being the stadium eating behemoths that they are now).

All well and good for Ms Marling. However, Charlie was absolutely devastated. Heartbroken he retreated to Chez Fink to pen the songs that would become the second Noah and The Whale album "The First days of Spring". There have been few albums that have been less appropriately titled "The First and, frankly, all of the days of Winter" would have been more accurate as this was a gloomfest from start to finish! Laura had clearly left a considerable mark of Charlie because this was the work of a broken man. The music critics absolutely loved the thing. Cleaners in music journalist's offices were using mops to clean up the frothing for weeks. Just as an aside, though, I wonder how many of them have listened to it since. I bought it, played it once and now its gathering dust next to Jim Noir and the Noisettes in my CD rack. Heartbreak is, sadly, part of life but unless you are the kind of person who thinks that "Blood on the Tracks" by Bob Dylan is a party record, the albums it inspires are usually unlistenable old bobbins.

Charlie then vanishes to cry into his beer. Meanwhile the nu folk scene gathers considerable momentum. Marlings's second album "I Speak Because I Can" gives her her second Mercury Prize nomination (And me, tinnitus) and then her lover Maurice's band, Scumford & Sons (I just can't do it, I'm sorry) release their debut album "Sigh no more". Initially it receives a resounding "Meh!" from the British public. But then something strange begins to happen (Well it was strange to me), very gradually the thing started to sell and sell and sell and...well you get the idea...until it was, almost literally everywhere. It was the 2010 equivalent to the Lighthouse Family, The Corrs and Shania Twain, the sort of bland, soulless dreck that everyone who never usually bought records buys. And behold, nu folk burgeoned no more, it had arrived, it was the dominant musical form (hem hem), no festival was complete without it (Indeed this is still the case with Numford (Not even amusing) and Sons headlining Glasto).

Which, as 2010 drew to a close, begged the thought, surely this was the time for Noah and The Whale to go massive? After all, they as good as started this whole thing. All they needed to do was produce...well "Sigh No More" 2 and they were in the money (Literally). Obviously that depended on Charlie having gotten (Is that a word?) over Laura but it had been a year and there was gold in them thar "nu folk" hills.

Now I was (sadly) not in the offices of Mercury Records when Charlie and the lads wandered in to let the assembled execs to have a listen to the third Noah and the Whale album "Last Night on Earth" but I can gladly picture the shock on the suits faces as what tumbled out of the speakers appeared to be, not "Sigh No More 2" but bizarrely the album that Tom Petty should have recorded after "Into the Great Wide Album" in 1991!! Now Sir Thomas is affectionately regarded by men of a certain age and there is no doubt that he has penned many a fine tune. However, I am struggling to think of any successful ENGLISH band who has suddenly decided that he was going to be their main inspiration. After all Petty's music conjures up images of the Wide Open Road, of the Endless Highway and so on and so forth. England , meanwhile, is the land of GRIDLOCK, of roadworks and the M25!

As "Waiting for my Chance to Come" filled the room, I can imagine that the pencil pushers thought "Well your chance has come, Finky, and now it's gone again because this album is going to die on it's backside!". Nu folk it certainly wasn't. However, they reckoned without two things a) The true perversity of the British record buying public and b) The quality of the tunes (In my humble opinion "L.I.F.E goes on" and the afore mentioned "Waiting for my Chance to Come" are two of the finest singles in recent years). The album went on to become a platinum seller and the introverted Fink seemed to mutate into a rock star on the live circuit (I saw them at the Roundhouse and he was clearly having a great time). The joie de vivre that both the album and the live shows captured seemed to represent a Giant two fingers to Maurice and Laura (who had split up themselves). Charlie, Noah and Whale 1 Nu Folk Goons 0.

Anyway time passes (And more of that in a minute) as it must and here we are in 2013 and Noah's career takes another turn with the release of their 4th album "Heart of Nowhere". Having been thrown a curveball by "Last Night on Earth", the bureaucrats at Mercury must have been worried that they would be confronted by "Noah the Drum N Bass" album or "Noah and the Whalesong". So they must have been relieved to receive an album that certainly appeared to have been made by the same band that made "Last Night on Earth". What was less welcome is that the album has received a commercial shooing. It went in the soaraway Top 40 album chart at a frankly underwhelming No 13 and, as I type, is currently plummeting down the charts like the previously referred to Whale jumping off a Divingboard!

And so we (At last, I am sure you are saying) come to the point of this post! Once again, I fear that the British Record Public has erred. Oddly, this is not the first time this happened. Cast your minds back to 1991 when they made "Stars" by Simply Red the best selling album of that year. Scowl as you recall 1986 when the best selling single of the year was "The Lady in Red" by Chris Burgh. Howl as you realise that the best selling album in 1995 (The height of Britpop) was NOT "What's the Story Morning Glory" by Oasis but rather it was the debut album by Robson and Jerome!

It would appear that either the British Record Public has moved onto Michael Buble, Bastille and Caro Emerald or they have lazily gone "Oh Last Night on Earth 2! Already got that" Well, anyone who is reading this is part of the Record Buying Public and I appeal to you, I am on my knees, I have rent my garments (Perhaps I need to stop there, unpleasant images are being conjured up), please give this album a try. I appreciate that my taste can be dodgier than a three week old kebab but this is a very fine record indeed and is by some distance Noah and The Whale's best record.

There seems to be some debate amongst the critics as to whether Charlie has gone "Ooh Last Night on Earth made me some moolah so I'll make another one" or if this is the kind of band they've always wanted to be. I'd like to think it's the latter. There's no one else out there making music like this (Not even Tom Petty, who to be honest hasn't made a decent record for 20 years, he doesn't need to, Charlie's doing it for him!). Mr Petty is clearly still an influence but the (cough) musical palette has been broadened to include The Cars (One More Night could be off "Heartbeat City), US 80s FM radio in general and Lloyd Cole (Not since "Easy Pieces" has anyone used girls names so often in songs). It is a wonderfully tuneful and catchy record which I keep playing over and over.

However more than that it is incredibly evocative. What am I on about? Well if the first album was about Laura, the second one about breaking up with Laura and the third one was saying "Up Yours Laura, I don't need you anymore, I've got Tom Petty", this one is about TIME and, particularly the passing thereof. The word "Time" gets mentioned more often than Prince mentions Nookie on any of his 80s albums or Lady
Gaga refers to....er..."Lady Gaga". According to his Birth Certificate Fink is 26 years old. However mentally he is older than me (And that's saying something). Most of these songs are about friends he has lost touch with, girls he has loved (NOT Laura thankfully) and is still thinking of, what was and what may still be. Themes that strike a chord with most people in possession of a heart that's still beating. It's a staggeringly mature record from someone almost half my age! It contains some of the most thoughtful lyrics that I have heard for years. My favorite at the moment being "But it's OK to not know where you want to go. And Love may not be the Cure, That's something I'll never know".

Where Charlie and his largely bearded colleagues go from here is anyone's guess. I'd like to think that I'd be celebrating my 60th Birthday (In 12 years time.....EEP!) at somewhere like the Union Chapel listening to him (and hopefully Whale) singing songs with more of his wisdom and observation about friends and loves gained and lost. If so, I hope he'll still be playing songs from this wonderful album!!

Easy Wonderful- Guster (2010)

When people wander into my gaff (Apologies- I've been watching old episodes of Minder again) and espy my vast CD collection (Stop sniggering at the back, this isn't Benny Hill!), there are a number of frequently asked questions:

• Wow, there's a lot of them aren't there? (Answer: Correct, astuteness is your middle name!)
• Why don't you put them all on i-tunes, sell them on e-bay and make room for pot plants and ornaments? (Answer: Because I don't want to, I love owning something I can see, now off you pop!)
• WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE?

To be fair, the last question is entirely valid because it is fair to say that a good proportion of the albums that I own have never threatened the popular music charts, not even with a wagging finger and a mild grrr. The Disc Jockeys of this fair country have never spun them on the airwaves. The artists have never appeared on Strictly Come Dancing, Wogan or anything featuring ruddy Jonathan Ross! So, you may ask, how on earth did they come to my attention?

Well I suppose it started off with the music press. And at this point I'd love to say that I read the NME, Melody Maker and Sounds under my bed covers at night, whilst listening to John Peel,  as that would make me sound at the cutting edge of cool. However, as anyone who knew me as a teenager, I was never near the cutting edge of anything (Least of all a pair of scissors when I went through my highland cow phase). In any case I was spending all my money on records so had nothing left for music papers. Which was just as well as Sounds was full of articles about the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, absolute donkey droppings- Saxon, Venom, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden-Run to the Hills (I'm here all week!). Meanwhile a lot of the stuff in the NME at that time was written by pseudo-intellectuals who tended to go on about Situationism, Dadaism and any other ism you can think of, rather music which was the purpose of the paper in the first place.

No, my encounter with the music press came when I was at University and had more cash (This may sound confusing to people who have been students in the last 20 years but I had a grant, something that was swept away by the Tory Education Secretary whose name escapes me but he looked like a slug, which I freely acknowledge doesn't narrow the field down much) and bought Music Monthlies, Q, Vox, Uncut, Select and Mojo.  To be honest the articles in most of them are of a variable quality (Uncut have a thoroughly tiresome obsession with Neil Young, even though his recent CDs would be better used as frisbees and when Q went through their "saucy" phase and kept printing semi-clad pictures of Christina Aquilera and Britney Spears, the wife had me shedbound). But what really intrigued me was the reviews pages, they were full of reviews by bands I had never heard of. Now clearly any review containing the phrases "Shimmering soundscapes of beauty"  or "Squalls of feedback drenched guitar" would not getting me parting with my cash but many of them sounded intriguing and so, armed with more money than sense, I headed off to the Longplayer in Canterbury or the local Our Price (Ah those were the days) to take a gamble. Now occasionally I fell flat on my face (I still hang my head in shame when I think of the £5 wasted on Mega City City Four's Sebastopol Road) but more often than not the reviews led to me striking gold. My life long love for artists such as The Men They Couldn't Hang, Miracle Mile, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Nanci Griffith have all stemmed from such leaps into the dark.

Now I have another wonderful way of discovering the unknown, the Internet. The marvels of Spotify and Youtube means I can test out a review before taking the plunge. Superb inventions which have saved me loads of money. I listened to a track by a band called Tale Impala the other day. The review in Uncut made it sound like the best thing since Victoria Pendleton. As soon as the track came on Youtube, however,  both the cat and I ran screaming from the study and hid under the bed as it sounded like an opera singer had had her foot trodden on by a rhino.

Then you have Allmusic! If you have not discovered this wonderful website go at once to www.allmusic.com and a world of wonder awaits. Essentially you type in the name of a band you like and it gives you a list of artistes who sound like them! GENIUS! As you can imagine this has led me to discover groups that I never knew existed (and in some cases bands that I suspect that hardly anyone knows existed apart from their mums and dads) and my world is a much richer place because of it. It was through All Music that I discovered Guster and their wonderful "Easy Wonderful" album (pun intended!) and it was while I was playing it that I got thinking of this whole subject. It's interesting because when I mention the names of obscure groups and artists (And, to be fair, Guster is a SHOCKING name), a number of people assume that their music must be weird or unlistenable. Again there is clearly a lot of unlistenable obscure music (If you ever get offered the chance to listen to a band called Einstende Neubarten, slap the person who is making the suggestion and scarper sharpish, unless you have a fondness for people banging industrial piping together repeatedly). However an awful lot of music that has never been given greater exposure to the public is actually very commercial, tuneful and thoroughly entertaining. "Easy Wonderful" is a fantastic collection of great catchy fun pop songs in the vein of Crowded House and Squeeze. If that sounds like your bag, have a listen on Youtube!

And that to me is the answer to the question that often comes after "Who are these people?", "Why do you listen to this obscure stuff anyway?", because it's great music. Now of course one man's meat is another policeman's encounter with Austin Mitchell. There are things that you've never heard of that you need never to hear (Ah Einstende Neubarten again!) but if you are sittting there thinking "Most of the music they play on the radio these days is shocking", "This reality TV music is like being punched in the ears by the Klitschkos" or "Surely there must be more to life than Mumford and Sons", there is an alternative! Pick up a music monthly, get on Allmusic, give it a spin on Youtube and take the plunge. Your ears will thank you! 

Absolutely-Madness (1980)

So here we go then..............

I love writing and I love music so for ages I had planned to write about music (Seriously the logic there is stunning) but write what? I'm not a student in the 80s so I can't write a fanzine and a book is too much like hard work for my liking and who'd publish it yet alone read it (I haven't got that many friends) so here I am in blogland!!

So when I have the time, when the kids aren't wrecking the house, when I'm not doing the ironing, I'll pop on here and give my thoughts on albums. They (whoever they are) say the album as a format is dying, that soon all that artists will release are songs. Well perhaps but for me music will always be about the album, I grew up with it, my house is full of the things, I have an awards evening with my mate, Alex, when we list our Top 10 albums of the year (And I don't care how sad that sounds!!).

This won't be about my favorite albums, because they change too often, or what's currently being released, because there's too much dross out there and life is too short to waste listening to bad music yet alone write about it (I could be ironing after all). It will just be albums that catch my eye as they lurk in my study or albums that I think need bringing to people's attention (on the assumption that anyone's reading this thing!) or albums that I think have been unfairly maligned by a cruel general public.

So why start with Absolutely? Well simply put it was the first album I bought my own hard earned money (or, in English, pocket money from my mum). I went into Cheriton Records (A quick explanation for anyone under 20: I am 48, I am old, When I was growing up, we had record shops. These were shops like the ones you have that sell phones only they sold records..."What's a record? you say....Oh never mind!), parted with said cash to the man with large beard and brown jumper and went back to the hallowed grounds of the Harvey Grammar School, where I was surrounded by oiks who wanted to know what I had purchased (And also thugs who wanted to see what you had bought so if it was something they didn't like, they could use it as an excuse to knock you about a bit, that was one of the disadvantages of vinyl, you couldn't hide the ruddy things...this caused me severe problems the day I bought the first Musical Youth album but that's another story).

So why did I chose this particular platter (Apologies, I sometimes lapse into the language of the buffoon when talking about music, I will try to keep it to a minimum)? After all, both at the time and looking back, it was a great time for music. There were so many other great albums I could have chosen: "Searching for the young soul rebels" by Dexys, "More Specials" by the Specials, "Signing Off" by UB40, "I just can't stop it" by the Beat- all albums in hindsight that I rate higher than Absolutely as good as it is!

Well, there were two reasons for making Absolutely the "First One". Firstly "Baggy Trousers"! I had always quite liked Madness. The Mod/Ska revival movement was the first one that grabbed my attention. But as good as My Girl and Nightboat to Cairo were, they lacked a killer single that really captured my imagination, unlike "Rat race" by the Specials, "Hands off.....she's mine" by the Beat and "Lip Up Fatty" by Bad Manners.  And in those days that mattered. These days you have Spotify and YouTube where you can listen to most of an album before you buy it. Back in the day, you had to rely largely on the radio which largely played singles.    A single had to be a great advert for the album (Girls Aloud would never have got away with Sexy No No No back then- Tangled Up, great album, Sexy No No No, such a dog of a first single it should have been put on a leash)

Baggy Trousers, however, was a blinder of a single! Much has been written about it, of course, how it captures the essence of secondary education from the point of view of those of us who were there in the early 80s, the fantastic video, the flying saxophonist etc. etc. All I would say is the moment I heard it, it captured my imagination, it sounded exciting, it sounded like a band breaking out of the ska/mod revival thing, it sounded like the sort of record that you wanted to play again as soon as it finished.

Secondly I loved the idea of Madness, they felt like MY sort of band. When I was 16 I wasn't staggeringly handsome (Checks mirror- that still holds true), or intellectual (also relevant) or built like a brick outhouse (You get my drift). But at that age you need a USP (Excuse the Business Bollocks) and mine was I was nutty!! I liked to give the impression that I never took anything seriously, that life was one big joke (Of course I was an adolescent and I was crying on the inside and writing bad poetry!) and Madness suited my image (If someone who once wore brown corduroy trousers can ever be described as having an image)

So back home came Absolutely after being pawed by Oiks and ignored by Toughs (who all liked Madness so good choice there then!) and was duly played on my battery powered record player (Note to the Under 20s- look that one up on Google). It was then duly overshadowed by 80-f by After the Fire, by that's another record and another story and that's the way with music in any case, one weeks great record is the next weeks dust magnet.

So what does it sound like now, after all these years (32 of the little tinkers)? Well it sounds like no one else but Madness (If you exclude any poor copycats like the Kaiser Chiefs, which one should). Madness are one of our greatest singles bands so Baggy Trousers and Embarrassment still stand out and sound great. But the rest is still very strong. There are no bad tracks (and how many albums can you say that about these days?). The commonly excepted wisdom is that Madness started out as a bit of a laugh and then became increasingly serious. However both Embarrassment and Shadow of Fear are about serious subject matter and the second  side of the album (Ah yes, the days when albums had sides, oh the nostalgia of it all) has a real area of paranoia about it.

Madness would go on to make a series of fantastic singles (Our House, House of Fun, The Sun and The Rain and so on) and one blinding album (The Rise and Fall) but there's something about Absolutely. Whilst other albums remain dust magnets, I'll get it off the shelves quite frequently and give it a spin and my wife will say "Not that old thing again", my three year old son will grin inanely and I will fail to resist the temptation to dance. Badly!

And besides it was my first one!!!