1) Life Is Life; 2) Tonight’s the Kind of Night; 3) L.I.F.E.G.O.E.S.O.N.; 4) Wild Thing; 5) Give It All Back: 6) Just Me Before We Met; 7) Paradise Stars; 8) Waiting for My Chance to Come; 9) The Line; 10) Old Joy
Big smiles, big melodies, but it doesn't sound quite right.
Most of Last Night on Earth is presented in third person. Up until this point, Charlie Fink and Noah and the Whale had predominantly operated in the first person, even when writing fictitiously like on much of their debut. On the subsequent The First Days of Spring and its intimately detailed break-up psychodrama, the first person narrative had taken a turn to so personal that the band had more or less become about Charlie Fink singing from his own perspective. So when Fink starts up their third album with the line “He used to be somebody”, that completely innocuous pronoun is actually jarring to hear coming from his mouth. That is, only if you’re still not too busy being taken aback by the fluttering synths and perky drum machine that “Life Is Life” kicks off with.
Noah and the Whale were likely going to change tract anyway, because following up an album so deeply and perhaps awkwardly personal as The First Days of Spring would be difficult no matter what - how do you move naturally back to normal from what was effectively a diary turned into a record? So you may as well pick up somewhere completely different. But Last Night on Earth is more than just a flick of new paint, it's a full re-invention. The folk leanings and acoustic production of the first two records have been buried under peppy pop rhythms, 80s-adjacent keyboard work and cheery choirs. The intentionally sullen outlook that the band had come to known for has shifted towards happier tides with plenty of sing-along choruses along the way, and the stories Fink tells are now very obviously and clearly stories: tales of other people observed from the side rather than him being the central narrator, a move that makes as much of a shift away from The First Days of Spring as it is possible.
Artists and bands shift shapes, that’s a fact, but sometimes the transformations aren’t quite the right fit and Last Night on Earth is one of those occasions. It's like someone putting on a radically different set of clothes trying to desperately want to be someone else. They don’t do a bad job with the more hook-shaped melodies and sparkling keyboards that are the signature element of the record - they’re nice melodies - but at times it sounds like forcing a smile. The First Days of Spring was the painful break-up album and Last Night on Earth is exactly what someone who still hasn’t gotten over the relationship would be doing, trying to show off that they’re a fresh new person who's moved on but where a shade of bitterness flares from behind the facade. And because this is so obviously personified around Fink himself, it’s only apt that it’s his performance where these aspects most show up. His faux-Springsteen narratives lack the resonance, smarts and heart of his former character studies and they don’t offer much of a springboard for Fink to show off his charisma either. He sounds like he's singing karaoke, pretending to front a different band to the one that did the first two records.
The big thing to note is that Last Night on Earth is not a bad record. Even if the direction change is debatable, they are still the same band that did the first two records and for the most parts, from a musical songwriting perspective, they’re still doing a good job. “Tonight’s the Kind of Night”, “Give It All Back” and “That’s Just Me Before We Met” may have a whiff of the band forcibly wedging into a space they don’t fit, but they have some enthusiasm and heart to them, trying to walk in their new shoes with pride even if they trip now and then. Despite the clumsiness or cheesinees they have genuinely good musical elements running within them, which come more obvious when you contrast them to the blatantly chart-flirting “L.I.F.E.G.O.E.S.O.N.”, a song with a chorus hook so weaponised it’s holding a gun against your temple to force you to tap your foot to the beat, and which comes across incredibly close to cynical in its attempt to be something completely different. “Life Is Life” faces almost the same damning judgment, especially with its paper thin and almost banal lyrics and slapped-on choir hell-bent on wanting to squeeze some positivity out, but the rest of the song does admittedly sound pretty neat and it's only its final third that threatens to drown it. “Waiting for My Chance to Come” falls somewhere in the middle but it’s ultimately rescued by its middle-eight, and if there’s one thing the album truly and consistently succeeds at are its post-second chorus bridges, which are a constant highlight of each and every song they feature in. Even “L.I.F.E.G.O.E.S.O.N.” has a middle-eight so great that its eight lines alone are one of the best parts of the entire record and is almost enough to get you thinking that the rest of the song is better than it actually is.
But the best material on Last Night on Earth is also the part of it that sounds most like the old Noah and the Whale, i.e. the slower songs. “The Line” sounds like a more natural progression for the band and the new production elements are used in a way that work with the band’s skillset better, and the near-hymnal closer “Old Joy” shows a little bit of open vulnerability in a record that’s otherwise shouting out loud how great it’s doing. And then there’s “Wild Thing”, which alone justifies the existence of this entire record. It’s a gorgeously arranged and produced (so many details flickering in the background that it really comes alive with a good set of headphones) piece of stargazing wistfulness that peaks beautifully when it lifts into its stunning middle-eight: it's not just an incredible bridge in an album full of them, but comfortably one of the best things the band have ever recorded. It’s a wonderful song - and maybe it’s not so surprising when I say that it’s the closest to something that could have appeared in the previous records.
Which, I guess, gives the impression that I didn’t want the band to change and I’m just disappointed that they did. But it’s more about how that change has come, rather than the actual shift itself. One of the lasting images in my head of Noah and the Whale is their performance of their breakaway hit “5 Years Time” from a festival performance around the Last Night on Earth tour. The song - a twee clap-happy pop song about a lovey-dovey couple - had become the band’s signature song, but given how it featured Fink’s former love before their big breakup and how lyrics were so openly enamoured, it obviously became a weight over his back. I say obviously, because during that performance Fink has the face and posture of a man who is having salt rubbed in his wounds live on stage, looking like he hates every single line he sings while the rest of the band are enjoying playing their big song. It’s clear Fink wanted to bury his past, move away from the sound he now associated with his old relationship and perhaps get the peoples’ favour again with brand new upbeat singles that could usurp his anchor-like hit. So the trendier sound (in 2011 terms), the snappier and hook-friendly songs and the brighter mood all come across like an intentional abrupt halt to old plans and a way to force a new start, and it’s not a growth spurt without its awkward moments. Last Night on Earth bears the sound of a band desperately wanting to find a new way to connect with people, but doing it by pushing themselves onto unsuspecting audiences rather than letting them come to the band. There’s enough good here to consider Last Night on Earth a nice album, really - but there's a downside to every upside and its direction never stops sounding slightly uneasy to the point that it’s difficult to simply enjoy the record without thinking how it’s like one band pretending to be another.
Rating: 6/10
Physical corner: Basic jewel case + lyrics booklet affair.
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