MUSIC INTERVIEW: NOAH AND THE WHALE
An Album that Reaches from a Synagogue in Bethnal Green to the Sunshine in L.A.
Noah & The Whale are an indie folk band who incongruously hail from the London district of Twickenham – the hallowed home of English rugby. The band’s rough-and-tumble elements are not found in their beautiful music but rather in their frequent changes in line-up. Alongside two Top 20 albums in the UK, they are also famous for being the launching pad for former female vocalists Emmy the Great and Laura Marling. Now solidified as an all-male four-piece, Noah and the Whale founding members Charlie Fink and Tom Hobden recently sat down for an exclusive interview with Buzzine in Austin, Texas during the SXSW Music Festival.
Stefan Goldby: Could we begin at the beginning?
Charlie Fink: We’re in a band called Noah and the Whale, which was formed about four years ago in London. I tell people that being in Noah and the Whale is kind of like taking a tour of Willy Wonka’s factory. The line-ups change… people come and go… they get distracted by the chocolate fountain. So now there’s four of us, which is me, Tom, Urby and Fred, and we just made our third record in Venice Beach, Los Angeles with co-producer Jason Lader. It’s called Last Night on Earth and it’s just coming out now.
SG: Writing in a synagogue in this day and age must be a little bit interesting, at least mentally. Did that have an effect on the music?
CF: We wrote some of the record in a converted synagogue in Bethnal Green—emphasis on converted. It’s not a functioning synagogue, which is good. It’s a really cool place to write because, for me, the reason I love it is the big, high ceilings. There’s this beautiful, natural reverb which is very forgiving, and that’s good when you’re writing a song…it kind of gives you confidence.
Tom Hobden: Being able to set up your gear as well, having it all ready to go whenever you want, is pretty handy.
CF: That’s true.
SG: The music that came out of those sessions seems more up-beat than the last record. Was that deliberate going in, or did that just organically happen?
CF: Absolutely. The new record is very purposefully…relative to the last one…primarily it’s more outward looking. And the main themes of the record - the main thread, for me - is about the limitless possibility of the nighttime and the romance of the nighttime, and there are stories about people making a change in their life, or on the precipice, or just after doing that. And I definitely think it’s a very positive record in its outlook.
SG: Is some of that helped by going to the sun and recording it in LA?
CF: I think it was one of those records that, having finished it, it made perfect sense to have done it in LA. But strangely, I think we had a definite vision of what we wanted from the album. I think it was after recording in LA that we realized how much sense it made to make the record in LA, because it was one of those albums where, although we turned up to LA with a very definite vision of what we wanted, the record has a sound that has some affinity with the place. And also what’s beautiful about LA is the equipment they have there and the people they have there. So we had singing on a couple of tracks The Waters, who were these gospel vocalists who sang with Michael Jackson and…
TH: …and Lenny Castro…
CF: Exactly. Lenny Castro is just a legendary percussionist. He’s got this shaker that’s made out of beer cans…
TH: Six beer cans…
CF: It’s incredible. And he’s done all the percussion for The Stones and Petty on recent albums, and they always say, “Only turn up if you bring the beer can shaker with you.” It’s just the most incredible-sounding shaker. And…also just people drifting into the studio during the day. We had Jen Turner from Here We Go Magic: she sang on a track, and Adam MacDougall, who plays in The Black Crowes, came in and put some moog down one day. It was a cool environment to be recording in.
SG: There’s obviously some pretty nice days in amongst all of that. Is there one particular shining moment in your mind for the recording of this album?
TH: I think the last track of the album - a track called “Old Joy” - tends, I think for all of us, to be the defining moment, especially when you’re actually recording that song, because we got the Waters Sisters to sing on it, and I remember we all being around the piano and just jamming out the first time, and hearing that lush harmony. That was a moment, definitely.
SG: How many hours in with the Waters Sisters do you have to be before you just start really wanting to just go, “Could you just sing…?”
CF: [Laughs] With The Waters, we let them have their privacy. I’m sure they’ve been asked a million times about working with Michael Jackson.
TH: All they asked for was coffee that was pretty much laced with sugar. [Laughs]
CF: They had two sessions with us. The first one they did, one of the singers came in with coffee with six brown sugars in it, and they just went in and did the greatest fuckin’ take I’ve ever heard. They’re amazing. They’re just such natural talent - brilliant.
SG: Or maybe the sugar is the secret?
CF: Or it’s the sugar! You don’t know. Maybe we should start trying… [Laughs]
SG: Charlie, for your last album, The First Days of Spring, you directed a short film to accompany the album. Has that affected the way you looked at making music videos this time around?
CF: Definitely. I think making the film with the last album also influenced the way I wrote songs on this record, because when you’re writing a scene for a film, it’s very visual, and a lot of these songs are very visual, so it’s initially imagined as scenes… you put your characters in this moment, and then you start writing about it. With regards to the videos, it’s hard because I think, to a certain extent with a song, the beauty is the room you give people. And because these are story songs, you want people to be able to add their own imagery to it and place it in their own lives. I’ve just directed the song “Tonight’s the Kind of Night,” the video for that, and that’s kind of a literal video, but the story meanders away from the song a little bit. I loved doing it.
The “Tonight’s the Kind of Night” video was shot just outside Los Angeles in an area called Palmdale, and the story of the song is essentially a photograph. It’s just this one moment where this boy is on a bus headed out of town making his break, and in the video, the idea is potentially where that story could go…one avenue it could go down, where this boy ends up on that night.
SG: Here as we sit on the precipice of new album land, what are you happiest with about the record?
CF: I think the thing I’m probably the most pleased about is that we’ve managed to diversify what we’ve done, and we’ve very purposefully challenged ourselves on this record. And for me, lyrically as well, it’s the first time I’ve written third-person narratives and characters, and as a band, there’s a lot of new instrumentation.
TH: We really strived for simplicity on this record, whereas previous records have been thick and orchestral. This record honed it all in.
CF: Exactly. One of the things about it is this record is only about thirty-three and a bit minutes long - a very short record - but it took much longer to make than the previous two, and part of the reason why is it was nine months of refining. Nine months of breaking it down to the bare essentials in everything: the arrangement, the lyrics and everything. There are songs that started off at nine minutes and ended up as five and a half. It was making sure there wasn’t any extra meat on this album -- it was just concise.
SG: You’re here in Austin this week playing shows—a good chunk of which will be people who haven’t heard you guys before. What do you hope somebody who sees Noah and the Whale for the first time walks away thinking?
CF: That’s a tough question. [Laughs] I think I’d like people to walk away from our shows thinking, “That was the greatest…” [Laughs]
That’s a hard one. I think what I like about us at the moment is probably the fact that we’ve got so many different bits to it, because the three albums are so different. You go through a whole spectrum of emotions when you’re watching Noah and the Whale… [Chuckles]
TH: But we ultimately want people to come away feeling fulfilled. Not wanting their money back.
CF: Satisfied. [Laughs] They got their money’s worth.
I think people should come and see Noah and the Whale if we’re playing relatively close to where you’re standing. If it’s not too much of a walk, might as well. Or if we’re on after the band you really want to watch, stick around. [Laughs]
Noah & the Whale’s latest album, ‘Last Night On Earth,' is out now on Island / Mercury Records.
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