Noah And The Whale @ Birmingham Glee Club – 11 November 2008
Looking and sounding as if Juno’s Michael Cera was a formative influence, Planet Earth are two young lads playing quirky, personal guitar music. There wasn’t much polish to their act, but then they had enough charm to see them through, even if many in the crowd preferred to chat near the bar.
Sleeping States managed to stem the crowd’s hubbub, at least for a couple of songs. Partly this was because the opening swashes of lo-fi sound made conversation pretty difficult, but partly it was because they seemed interesting. They were too, although too much fiddling with toys and gadgets detracted from an appreciation of their shoegazey folk.
Noah And The Whale are a different proposition to the band I saw outdoors at Cannock Chase a mere four months ago. There, in a larger space and trailing behind Fionn Regan and The Zutons on the bill, their sound packed little punch. In the confines of the Glee Club, with a top 10 hit to their name and a few more bodies onstage to bolster their sound, they were much more impressive.
Charlie’s hangdog vocals often contrasted with the merry stomp kicked up by his cohorts, especially on ‘Rocks And Daggers’ and ‘2 Atoms In A Molecule’. With only one album’s worth of material to play, we got most of ‘Peaceful, The World Lays Me Down’ with the odd cover chucked in (although not of MGMT’s ‘Kids’ despite the fiddle veering in that direction of that songs melody a couple of times).
Their biggest hit to date was introduced with little fanfare but the crowd needed little encouragement by this point and duly provided some polite excitement. As ‘5 Years Time’ ended and a few fans made an early move towards the door, I got the impression the band might have a few more on-the-money pop hits in them.
Review – Chris Unitt
Photos – Ursula Roxy Aitchison