“This is better going to be a good session”, Charlie banters when struggling to climb the fence with his tight trousers and sharp boots. He and his bandmate Tom Hobden came about to play an acoustic set of two songs from their recent album “The First Days Of Spring” on disused train tracks behind the venue of their first Berlin show. It’s a late September afternoon with the wind howling in one’s ears, when Charlie raises his sonorous and at the same time likeable wry voice to sing “love songs about heartbreak and grief” (“Slow Glass”) and continues with “a song for anyone with a broken heart” (“Blue Skies”). Tom, who has started his early career as a choirboy, caresses the lugubrious songs with subtle harmony-singing and violin play. With a view on rough tower blocks, power poles and advert on one side and – more romantic – an old water tower and trees swaying in the wind on the other you can really breathe the atmosphere of this better than good lo-fi session. What’s most impressive about Noah and the Whale’s sorrowful music is that it magically brightens up the mood of people that join the sing-a-long songs. It’s a melancholy-mellifluous universe where – against all odds – “blue skies are calling”.

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