The London folky four-piece Noah and the Whale made huge waves last year with their well-received debut album Peaceful, the World Lays Me Down and memorable singles “5 Years Time” and Shape of My Heart”. Earlier this year in Hoboken, New Jersey, the band laid down the tracks to their follow-up, tentatively titled First Days of Spring, which drummer Doug Fink noted to me in a previous interview that the album will have a more electric feel than their first. So I was eagerly awaiting to hear how their new sound would compare to the whistling and fiddling so closely linked to them in my mind. The Washington D.C. date at the Black Cat on the 2nd of May was a great night of 3 great folk rock acts and capped off a 2-week jaunt across America.
Coming along for the ride were two American acts – Anni Rossi and Ferraby Lionheart. In a smart, short, burgundy dress and cute white boots, Rossi was a little firecracker ready to rock. I heard a fellow gig-goer comment to his girlfriend that the mic was too low for Anni – she solved this by standing on an extra wooden platform that she used to great effect, with her boots, as percussion as she was playing. It’s almost incomprehensible that she could sing so sweetly, play her viola, and stamp her feet to the beat – she was a complete one-woman band. She humorously introduced one of her songs as “being inspired by Ace of Base,” which elicited delighted whoops from those of us who danced to “The Sign” in the early ’90s. The highlight of her short, five-song set for me was the beautifully sung “West Coast”, which felt like she was taking us on a trip across America. If you closed your eyes for a moment, you could imagine sitting in a railway car, the Sierra Madre passing you by when you glimpsed out the window. 
If you like Nick Drake, the Lilac Time, or Elliott Smith, you’ll like Ferraby Lionheart. He has the kind of gentle, fragile voice that works exceptionally well against an acoustic guitar or lightly played piano chords. Truth be told, I knew nothing about Ferraby before coming to this gig except that the band came highly recommended from their tour mates in Noah and the Whale. I was especially taken by the romantic “Under the Texas Sky”, which was even more wonderful with the cheeky line of “I miss you like a honey jar misses the bear.” I don’t get a chance to listen to nearly enough thoughtful singer/songwriters, so I really enjoyed Ferraby’s set. I look forward to hearing the music he’ll be making in the future.
Now, to the main event – Noah and the Whale. They’ve been a mainstay of my mp3 player’s song rotation since I heard “5 Years Time” late last summer for the first time on BBC Radio2 and fell in love with it instantly. (If I remember correctly, it was a new addition to the Radcliffe/Maconie show playlist.) It’s not every day you have a band that has the usual elements of a traditional rock band – a vocalist with a guitar, a bassist, and a drummer – augmented with the surprisingly complementary and very un-rock instruments of fiddle, ukulele, and the occasional whistle. But it all works together like a dream with singer Charlie Fink’s emotional lyrics about relationships.
The band was met with thunderous applause when they first took the stage. A couple songs into their set, Charlie asked us how we were, and this question was met with cheering. The poor guy must have been waiting for us to ask him how he was doing, because he next deadpanned, “I’m fine, thanks for asking.” He also later let us in on a little secret – that his voice had been giving him trouble during the whole tour, but after 2 nights of partying in New York City, he was feeling much better. Of course, the D.C. crowd ate this story up, happy to hear that vocally he could give us 100%.
The crowd sang along enthusiastically to songs off their first album like “Mary” (an obvious favorite of mine) and “2 Atoms and a Molecule”. Another crowd favorite, “Give a Little Love”, started enough like the album track we all know and love, but then, like several songs in their set, concluded with an extended all-out rocking jam outro with Charlie kneeling over his guitar, frantically fooling with some electronic gizmos on the floor, while drummer Doug, bassist Urby Whale, and fiddler/keyboardist Tom “T-Bone” Hobden were playing equally as frenetically on their instruments. As expected, we were treated to several new songs from the new album, including the title track, “First Days of Spring”; overall, the new material went down very well with the audience. My impression of these songs was that Charlie is trying a sultrier voice tone, and there’s more of a harder rock edge musically with the new material, but the band’s sound is still unmistakeably Noah and the Whale, with Tom’s welcome and omnipresent fiddle.
Anni Rossi took the stage at singer Charlie Fink’s invitation to provide backing vocals to their popular single, “5 Years Time”, and Tom took a break from his fiddle and impressed me with his on-the-spot whistling. None of that frantic pressing of buttons on the iBook for this band! Charlie said he and the band were really pleased to have such an amazing reception on the last night of their all too brief North American tour, and I’m glad D.C. was able to give that to them. Their unexpected encore was a cover of the Smiths “Girlfriend in a Coma”, which was met with excited cheers. The crowd only wanted more. Noah and the Whale will certainly be welcomed back to Washington with open arms whenever their schedule allows them to return to our fair city.
Noah and the Whale: website | myspace
Anni Rossi: myspace
Ferraby Lionheart: website | myspace
This show was amazing,I agree.Charlie and the boys turned it up a notch.It was a way better show then the New York one I went to a couple months ago,There were no people yelling for them to do five years time like in NYC.But this show was specialy important to me since I was invited to it by the band at the NYC show and at the end of this one Urby gave me his bass pick while on stage.