- Record Label: Cherrytree/Interscope
- Release Date: Oct 6, 2009
- Critic score
- Publication
- By date
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They have done a hell of a lot of growing up. An immense album.
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The quiet simplicity of these songs is better suited to Fink’s lone voice, clear without a jumble of voices and complex harmonies, strengthening the continuity of the storytelling.
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This is a beautiful album. Moving rather than maudlin, uplifting rather than depressing.
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Mojo"This is a song for anyone with a broken heart," Fink sings on 'Blue Skies' and the break-up album of the year is complete. [Sep 2009, p.98]
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However maudlin Noah & The Whale begin, then, there's a wonderful narrative here that sees them move from first-love blues, through resentment to healing and finally to acceptance.
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Heartbreak can tear a songwriter to shreds, but it serves the opposite purpose here, lending a sense of vulnerability to Fink's baritone and adding some much-needed drama to the band's music, which previously concerned itself with twee-styled progressions and summery melodies.
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The First Days of Spring falls in the gentle, folky space between Belle & Sebastian and It’s Jo and Danny, but manages to carve out a singular place for itself with thoughtful lyricism and artful songwriting.
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It’s an intriguing record brimming with solid songs that only loses step by keeping to a narrow path.
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Under The RadarThe First Days Of Spring has a wonderful orchestral bent, with many tracks graced by symphonic backing that brings welcome grandeur without succumbing to cloying melodrama. [Fall 2009, p.59]
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Despite its shortcomings, The First Days of Spring marks a welcome escape from such labels as "quirky" and "twee", with a musical maturity that requires only an equivalent lyrical magic to amount to something truly special.
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Ambitious, orchestral and accompanied by a 45-minute film, it candidly documents singer Charlie Fink’s recovery from a badly broken heart.
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As a lyricist, Fink's too reliant on indistinct yearn, and while you might relate to some of Spring's bummed-out bromide, Fink's moping seems too scopic to hit anyone very deep for very long. Sometimes you just put it in a letter.
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There’s just enough mediocre material that slips through to make The First Days of Spring more of a curiosity, an almost-successful experiment, rather than something truly remarkable.
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As a document to a breakup, it's all a bit middling and lifeless. Sadness is one thing, but it's spring for Noah and the Whale. Where's the color?
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At the moment, though, it appears as though this is one twee-pop album that simply doesn't pop.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 32 out of 36
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Mixed: 2 out of 36
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Negative: 2 out of 36
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Jan 10, 2014