- Record Label: Interscope
- Release Date: Sep 16, 2008
- Critic score
- Publication
- By date
-
Alternative PressThe reason Peaceful, The World Lays Me Down works here other "buzz band" albums don't is because theirs just feels natural--NATW aren't trying to buy into any trend. They're just writing great music. [Sep 2008, p.151]
-
It requires TLC, and some listeners–-and I count myself among them–-are just too heavy-handed to stay in its company long.
-
It's gentle enough to be background music, lively enough to be worth listening to for the sake of it, and certainly an impressive achievement for a 21-year-old's debut.
-
If soft-hearted London folkies Noah And The Whale aren’t quite as deft with savoury rice, they’ve got the knack of balancing heart-melting, pupil-dilating ditties with words of chill bleakness down pat.
-
Their foppish indieboy spin on classic folk-rock is, more often than not, perfectly listenable. But you can't help but wonder, between all the gleeful strums and wizened howls, whether they possess the inner torment to carry off such worldly material.
-
The twinkling acoustic songs, bursting with brass, keyboards and fiddle are economic and brimming with sure-footed confidence but Fink's brittle cynicism ultimately leaves Noah & the Whale stranded
-
Perhaps it's just that the rest of the songs aren't up to scratch, but this album is a simple case of diminishing returns--what appeared carefree and sparkly-eyed to begin with feels more and more calculated as you go on, what first seemed endearing ends up feeling a little irritating.
-
Earnestness is so damningly difficult to nail down, but Fink and his cohorts come as close as anything this year, displaying an aptness for cloying love songs minus the puppy dog eyes.
-
Noah and the Whale try their best to make weighty songs (look no further than the paint-by-numbers description of a funeral on the limp “Death by Numbers”), but they’re better as a pop group that digs ukuleles and acoustic guitars.
-
UncutTwenty-one-year-old Charlie Fnk's cracked baritone is brown sugar-sweet, '5 Years Time' is a hit, and the album's Jonathan Richman-esque gawkiness makes it double endearing. [Oct 2008, p.94]
-
Peaceful, The World Lays Me Down could have been all kinds of terrible but instead turns out to be an album that fans of the bands mentioned earlier, plus fans of intelligent and heart-felt indie pop, should probably investigate.
-
Peaceful, the World Lays Me Down, the debut LP by the London folk-pop quartet, bites its best sensitive-indie forebears and then pukes up all the most superficial chunks.
-
Under The RadarThe vivaciousness and bright energy of the instrumentation offsets the melancholic subject matter perfectly, so that the listener is lost in the composition. [Fall 2008, p.82]
-
All in all, Peaceful, the World Lays Me Down, even with its mortality obsession, is mostly a statement of nothing, but at least it sounds good most of the time.
User score distribution:
-
Positive: 16 out of 19
-
Mixed: 2 out of 19
-
Negative: 1 out of 19
-
Jun 12, 2015
-
Feb 12, 2020
-
Feb 6, 2014