Noah & The Whale @ The TLA.

Text by Kevin Stairiker.

Playing in support of their latest album, “The Last Night On Earth,” British band Noah & The Whale stormed the TLA in what was announced as their first show in Philadelphia.

Playing to a packed crowd mostly made up of girls and their doting boyfriends, Noah & The Whale carefully packed their set with a solid mix  of crowd favorites and new tracks. Their show reflected the changes made within the band since it first burst onto the scene with the candy-coated single “5 Years Time” in 2008 (see below). Gone were the xylophones and ukuleles of yore and in was a lean, keyboard and synth sound that harkened back to the early-2000s garage rock boom.

Appearing as an impeccably dressed five-piece (three-piece suits and dress socks!), the band’s focal point for the entirety of its set was lead singer Charlie Fink. Knowing full well the amount of estrogen in the air, Fink went full on with dancing to the music, cuing specific musical gestures with repeated waves of the hand. Although he didn’t say much more than the requisite thank you for the first half of the show, jokes abounded for the second half, with the crowd hanging on every British-accented word.

With three drastically different albums to their name, Noah & The Whale’s set could’ve been a drastically dizzying mix of styles and sounds but thankfully, older songs from “Peaceful, The World Lays Me Down” and “The First Days Of Spring” were updated to the current style of playing. As long as the constantly shouting Philly audience (“Play ‘2 Atoms In A Molecule!” and “It’s Tina’s birthday!”) didn’t scare them off, Noah & The Whale will hopefully come back far more frequently in the future.