Gripe Session! In the midst of trends set by-well-the trendsetters you always have those traveling in the wake creating pale imitations of sound or even name that only sound like they're "of the minute". The countless "Wolf Bands" the "The" band craze before that. This one reeks of familiarity in a different way to me though....Noah and the Whale.
Before we even get to the music, lets go over the name/design scheme. Take the name, Noah and the Whale......sounds familiar.....almost like.....The Squid and the Whale.....which was written by...Noah Baumbach ("One of my favorite Directors!" he said, his voice dripping with sarcasm.) Baumbach helped write The Life Aquatic: With Steve Zissou, but I'm sure I'm imagining things here, so lets move on and take a look at the album cover...Ohh wow they actually used the Life Aquatic font and the hollow version like in the movie not to mention with the same colors.......
Ok, ok ok. I'm sure I'm somehow being shallow here, maybe the music is really good I'm just judging books by their extremely familiar covers here. Nope. The music is essentially a group of people who play around on horns and xylophones (an indie must!) and attempt to approximate something Sufjan or his label mates might consider putting on an album.
I could go on about how the lead singers voice reminds me of Grover from Sesame street but I wont because any mention of Jim Henson in an indie album review might somehow correlate the music with a good thing.
Entirely disagree with your assessment/review of the music (your album art observations are well-founded..the band's music videos also conjure strong wes anderson vibes)
ReplyDeleteAs far as the music, I think the band has an extremely fresh and unique sound... their instrumentation is well-done and the singer's (and laura marling's) voices are somewhat strange, but strike me as honest and simple.
This release and frightened rabbit's latest are way up there in my favorite for the year.
cheers and thanks for the post!