Album Review: Noah & The Whale - Heart Of Nowhere

Xylophone. Strings. Crescendo. This album is cinematic. There's a pace to the tempo at the front end of the album that drives the mind to family car trips and soft rock radio. There's a tendency to write this album off as yet more bland power folk with Charlie Fink's Lou Reed style vocal occasionally verging on monotonous and the scarcity of lyrics leading to large slabs of repetition. But this is an album of moments. 

The out of place guitar solo on All Through The Night that sounds like it's being recorded through a supermarket sound system. Anna Calvi's guest vocal on the title track. The synth riff in Silver And Gold that echoes Talking Heads' This Must Be The Place. The tangible “settling” for Silver And Gold over Harvest. The hollow Triffids-style bassline on One More Night. There Will Come A Time invoking Mondo Rock's Cool World. 

This album is mature. It's sombre. There are some incredibly hopeless and soul destroying moments, like in Not Too Late, sung as a desperate plea where somehow you can just sense that it is too late. The strings are a little overbearing at times, but when coupled with jaunty bass and Fink's high register it works nicely. In saying this album is cinematic, it's not a Tarantino soundtrack, more like a Jennifer Aniston/Ryan Gosling rom-com. Sounding more Franz Ferdinand than the indie folk set they've been blooded with (the Marlings and Mumfords of the noughties), the taught, upbeat tracks linger longer in the ear than the moody broody ballads. 

Heart Of Nowhere is like an '80s Cosby sweater: a little dated and daggy, but still warm and comforting.