Dorks And Losers

A band’s name is a sacred ves­sel, mark­ing the turn­ing point in any group’s musi­cal career that they offi­cially want to make known how peo­ple around the world will call them. Some­times it might be an innocu­ous nick­name and some­times it might be an homage to a par­tic­u­lar influ­en­tial hall­mark such as a song title or even a movie title.

Up-and-coming UK folk band Noah And The Whale gets their name through a com­bi­na­tion of one of their col­lec­tively favorite films (The Squid And The Whale) and its direc­tor (Noah Baumbach).

Any­one who’s seen the quirky indie movie can instantly relate to the debut album Peace­ful, The World Lays Me Down by a few quirky musi­cians. Led by broth­ers Char­lie and Doug Fink, this Lon­don quar­tet (along with Tom Hob­den and Matt Urby) cites such lumi­nous pre­de­ces­sors as Bob Dylan, Bon­nie ‘Prince’ Billy, and Daniel John­ston for the inspi­ra­tions of their brand of kooky (and pos­si­bly off-the-wall abstract) indie folk best reserved for sound­tracks to Far­relly Broth­ers films (think The Push Stars from There’s Some­thing About Mary). Men­tion­ing Wes Ander­son, although accu­rate, would have been too easy.

What helps set Noah And The Whale apart from oth­ers is also what keeps them apart from oth­ers, and that’s not always a good thing.

The album opens with the up-tempo banjo tune “2 Atoms In A Mol­e­cule,” fol­lowed by the camp­fire sing-along-like “Jocasta” and the sup­posed love song “Shape Of My Heart.” With lyrics like “For your heart is like a flower as it grows / And it’s the rain, not just the sun that helps it bloom / And you don’t know how it feels to be alive / Until you know how it feels to die,” the lat­ter song which on first glance should be the procla­ma­tion of one man’s undy­ing love for his woman is instead the some­what tragic tale of one man’s reality-beaten half-empty cup of love for his woman.

Depress­ing, isn’t it? Depend­ing on your point of view, if you hit repeat you’ll likely get the gist of the eight sub­se­quent tracks, but even I’m not that spite­ful. There are some worth­while tracks like the happy go lucky “5 Years Time” and the love song “Mary” that sur­pris­ingly closes with a cup half-full kind of ending.

NATW fills a room like the hum of a refrig­er­a­tor. For moments you can tell the appli­ance is work­ing, but any par­tially worth­while dis­trac­tion would bring more prece­dence to your attention.

[photo via Sneak Attack Media]
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Track list:

1. 2 Atoms In A Mol­e­cule
2. Jocasta
3. Shape Of My Heart
4. Do What You Do
5. Give A Lit­tle Love
6. Sec­ond Lover
7. 5 Years Time
8. Rocks And Dag­gers
9. Peace­ful, The World Lays Me Down
10. Mary
11. Hold My Hand As I’m Lowered

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