The Airportline: Observations

The days between the Christmas munchies and New Years decadence is often spent with reading. At least in my family. As I am currently covered in Snow in Sweden I am surrounding myself with words. There are newspaper piles on all the tables, except for when my mom does one of her feared cleaning sweeps and suddenly make them disappear ('I thought you had already read it', her usual explanation for suddenly trashing tonnes of words that never caught my eyes) or when my dad burns some of them while lighting the fire place. Here are two columns and one blog post you should rest your eyes on during these days if you are in need:

1. Marina Hyde's hilarious The Guardian column: 1, Beckham. 2, Murdoch. 3, Britney's ex. Will this do for my list of the noughties?

She takes on the list obsessed media and manages to both pinpoint both a sad media development and what it says about our time. It's a bit similar to the corporate world where everything that can be put into numbers automatically is seen as something of value.

2. Joshua Bearman's International Herald Trubune story My half-bakes bubble

Where he manages to describe the root of the financial crisis with a very funny story about him selling cake futures during lunch break in school. Worth a read even if you have no interest in contemporary economic policy and a must if you do have an interest in it.

3 The Fader music blog's Listmania

A must for every music nerd and, among many other great things, includes this list concerning one of Airportline's absolute favourite bands this year, Girls:

Top Five Lyrics That Prove That Christopher Owens of Girls is a Modern Day Byron, Too Earnest to Be a Modern Day Don Juan, Just a Simple Man with Regular Desires and No Need or Understanding of How to Quell, Mask or Spurn What he Truly Wants
5. Lay in the park, smoke in the dark/ Get high like I used to do/ Summertime soak up the sunshine with you
4. No, I’m never gonna fix up and i might me crazy/ But I’ve really got it goin’ on
3. I’ve got an ice cream cone, and I’m feeling fine tonight/ And when I get you back home, oh you know I’m gonna do you right, oh yeah
2. I’ve got a sad song in my sweet heart/ And all I really ever need is some love and attention
1. Let’s be the people that we want to be/ Let’s live like we could never part

http://news.bbc.co.uk/weather/forecast/2454

Airportline is in Sweden. Next to me my sister is wrapping presents and the scent of freshly baked scones is still lingering in the air from the morning. We are listening to this pretty Christmas song from Sufjan Stevens epic 5-cd 'Songs For Christmas', as suggested by Swedish music journalist Kristin Lundell. Winter is all around and yesterday I sat in an airplane in Copenhagen in a snowstorm, waiting for a Thai Airways airplane to be de-iced while finishing the last pages of Amos Oz Black Box, admiring his personal portraits. Or how about this apt description a few pages from the end of the novel:

'A slightly stooping, balding man, with fine skin; his appearance reminds me of a Scandinavian village pastor, on his face a strange mixture of mortification, meditation, and irony, his shoulders sloping downward, his back bony and stiff. Only the grey eyes seem cloudy and damp, like the eyes of a confirmed alcoholic'

From the Airportline crew we wish you a Merry Christmas and we will be back after the celebrations with more observations from the world.

As the rest of the Dutch population made normal snow men, or in some instances snow dogs, they set their sights higher. It was an early Sunday morning when they met at the south entrance of Vondelpark. They spend the first few hours smoking and making drawings. Dutch families made circles around them with their snow hungry kids and functional strollers. After a few hours of preparation they began working on their giant snow man. Since many of them had not attended their biology classes their snow man did not have the ball shape structure of ordinary snow men, or the more straight structure of a real man. Instead it turned out looking more like an over sized object school children could practice putting on a condom on. When I told this to the architects they immediately tried to strangle me with the snowman’s scarf. I retracted my statement and choose to view its creative and aspirational qualities instead. After hours of hard labor, always accompanied by several professionally rolled joints, the builders were finally ready to show of their work as the sun slowly began to set over the snow covered trees. Cameras surrounded the young men as they proudly posed next to their giant creation. It was the proudest moment of their life, their own moon landing, their own Eiffel Tower. It was only a few days until Christmas but these tenacious construction workers showed that even a few days before the big day of giving, a giant snow man in the shape of a dildo can be provided for free to an appreciative public. There is nothing like giving a giant snow man to the people of Amsterdam, the architects concluded, before leaving the park and the snowman to its own devices.

Airportline is listening to the new Fanfarlo album Reservoir (beautiful) while the cars and bikes slide around on the snowy streets of our now white city. Took a walk in Vondelpark earlier and the amount of snowmen (and one snow dog!) that Dutch people produced was highly impressive. No matter where I turned snowmen were parading the snow covered lawns and park areas. Then I went and drank some Glögg and had som pepparkakor, both highly Swedish Christmas things. We are now getting mentally ready to once again travel north: the editorial board will be flying to Göteborg this coming Tuesday.

As I told you on Friday Airportline's guerrilla advertising campaign has now hit the streets of Princeton, USA where we dominated the news and also went looking inside a bronze Tiger. We expect our readership consisting of bronze statue lovers and academics to sky rocket during the coming years, so make sure to spread this around to your friends, and foes. The guerrilla advertising scheme will continue and if you would like to participate in this global quest for recognition please leave a comment or send me an email and I will provide further instructions.

After a week of some technical issues and me trying to distance myself from my lap top a bit Airportline will now be up and running again, as you might notice (unless you consistently attend this website on strong hallucinogenic drugs, which by the way, we in secret would applaud) the layout has been changed again. This was a necessary thing to do since my Finnish technical advisor, and Dutch national floorball team member, informed me that my previous template was not finished. This meant that the Airtportline empire considered starting some serious internet warfare, but, since we don't know how to fight a war in real life, or on line (we blame Sweden), we decided to sit and grunt instead.

After this grunting period we finally decided that unfinished templates is nothing for Airportline, thus, we were forced to take a journey into the wild (a.k.a. Google) in order to find a new design which would not dent out already fragile financial situation. After displaying some amazing google skills we found this template, and since I have heard very few comments about this, except 'more black = good' we will keep this for a while.

Tomorrow we will finally present the second leg on the guerrilla advertising campaign that was started to great applauds during the spring in Paris. One of our esteemed US correspondents has met some tigers and newspaper-stands in the US academic headquarters of Princeton. I smell some tweed!

Before that click play on the video and listen to one of the best remixes I've heard this year. Troublemaker pull of a perfect combination of the Matt & Kim slacker anthem Daylight pared with hip hop giants De La Soul.

After problems with the comment section work is being performed. A new layout might be on the cards. When we return to normal we have US guerrilla advertising, fantastic pop and some other goodies for you.

It seems as if nudity has gotten some kind of revival in popular culture lately. I am not sure why this is the case. Perhaps its all that normative conservatism that is floating around in the political sphere that is making people revolt, or maybe its just an extreme way of showing yourself off when comedic Facebook status updates or Youtube videos of a sleep walking dogs running into a wall is no longer enough? White bony indie musicians seem to have an especial interest in doing this and I personally have no real issue with it, although when it is sold in a music video I always get the feeling that they are trying to cover up the fact that the music maybe isn't that interesting without nudity. The Brooklyn duo Matt & Kim did pull the combination of good music and interesting nudity by throwing their clothes of in New York's Times Square to the tune of their very pretty melodic song Lessons Learned.

So, last Wednesday I went to a conference about sex. I told you I would report something about this, but as you know: I never do what I say I will in this blog. But our esteemed Airportline contributor from the Oil drinking nation of Norway felt that this was a great waste and took it upon her to explain what exactly went on there before that morning coffee and all those free drinks we had afterwards. So: this is what we learned:

Dr. Ken Kraaijeveld
Explained that in asexual mating all individuals are female. They get a lot more offspring, but since they reproduce through cloning there's not too much genetic variation and they are reliant on mutations to adapt to new environments. (Airportline does not really understand this)

So, while sexual reproduction yields fewer offspring, and provides a now sexual selection on both genders (fastest sperm, most attractive egg (Airportline finds the idea of attractive eggs very comedic), but also less depressive results, like clever females), it is the best and most sustainable evolutionary way of reproduce, because it combines genomes from different individuals and thus we have more variations in a population, which in return provide more protection against parasites. Ok, that sentence was ridiculously long, sorry. But this is especially reflected in our complex immune system, and it is believed that attraction between humans might be based on a search for mates with a different immune system than yours to make super-babies in the battle against pathogens. (Airportline: what?!)

What have we learned? If you must reproduce asexually, you should be tiny, i.e. unicellular, like bacteria, so that your generation time is minimal, and mutation rates should be high. However, if you want to become a complex multicellular being, sex is the way to go. Fewer offspring, but more invested in them.

Dr. Ellen Laan
Argued that there are 237 reasons for humans to have sex. i.e. it's not just for reproduction. The main reasons listed for men and women are similar (1. pleasure 2. Love and commitment 3. Experience searching).

(Airtportline was impressed that she quoted Woody Allen early in this lecture: ‘masturbation is sex with someone I love’ being the memorable line she used when she discussed the definition of sex)

However, the parental investment theory says that the gender contributing most energy and resources to the offspring should be more choosy in picking a mate. In most mammals, incl humans, this is the female, since we're going through 9 months of carrying a bowling ball in our uterus and need to feed it from our glands for at least some months after birth (WHICH IS LETHAL AND COMPLETELY INSANE WHEN YOU THINK OF IT). In that case women should be better than men at controlling their sexual response, such as mentally turning the sex drive off after getting turned on, but in her research she didn't find any empirical evidence for this (remember, the chair, the vibrator and the erotic movie-experiment?). Rather, men were better at controlling this.

She also said that the main reason that post-menopausal women experience a lower sex drive and a bad sex life is not hormonal, bur rather dependent on the state of their sexual state prior to menopause. So, an exchange of partner might be better than taking hormones. Haha (Norway oil drinking laugh)

Dr. Tristham Wyatt
THE PURPLE VELVET SUIT!!! (Airportline ads that he was wearing a highly impressive suit which I almost asked him about after three beers and four bitterballens)

Success of the smelliest? Pheromones drive sexual selection in many many phyla. this has been widely accepted for insects since 1959 (MOTHS!) but now we know that pheromonal attraction occurs also among higher mammals, and the elephant's pheromone consists of the same as the moths'. (so, why don't moths fly and try to mate with an elephant? because the composition is different in the different species!)

- Pheromones is not correct greek (or was it latin..?), it should be pheroromones, but that's ridiculous. (Airportline ads that this actually was a very funny joke, but maybe not so much in writing)

-Being smelly also means being easily discovered by enemies that want to eat you. Being smelly AND ALIVE sends signals to the females that your super-genes allow you to be super-quick in escaping from predators, or very strong etc..it's called honest signalling of good genes cause it gives the males a handicap they have to overcome, and it's very sexy for females. The classical example is the peacock's tail-feathers, which is highly conspicuous. Males with a poor gene-combination could never get away with that kind of ornament, they would be dinner.

Dr. Julie Bakker
Ok she was not so interesting but i noted that sex differences is also present in monkeys when it comes to preferring human gender-based toys.
Dr. Eva Becher
I fell asleep. twice. and drew a picture of a face on the note page. (Airportline also fell asleep, and then drew strange shapes that in no way resembles Picasso's Guernica.)

Dr. Rob Knell
He speculated whether resistance to STDs would function as honest handicaps (see above). Thing is, STDs are pathogens, often viruses attacking us just like other viruses, but exploit our reproductive strategies to spread themselves to new hosts. However, humans on the other side would not wish to have an STD so we should have evolved ways to discover which individuals are infected by these diseases and avoid them. So why do 50% of promiscuous Scandinavians have chlamydia (yes, it is an epidemic. yes, one should get tested!)?

Thing is, for a pathogen, the goal is NOT to destroy its host. The human body functions as their habitat, just like we exploit the resources from our habitat. First thing they should learn, and it seems like they're better than humans at this, is to apply SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT. Exploiting their hosts' resources all at once and killing it off is not very good, cause where do they go from there? I.e. strains of pathogens that destroyed their hosts quickly also died at the same time, and since the STD's are dependent on keeping their host still sexually attractive for their own spreading, their should evolve to become less virulent by time. Like syphilis.

So, therefore, we have not evolved detection of potential mates with STDs. STDs may be annoying, painful and shameful but not to the degree that humans stop reproducing. They're like the cold-virus, dependent of their host coughing at strangers to spread, and so keeping their host chained to their bed is not very good for them.

Airportline wants to thank our special biology expert and sporadic blogger for this detailed report from a nice conference day.

The Quote:
'Is it a dream, is it a lie, I think I'll let your decide' - Arcade Fire - Power Out

The Video:
If you think a music video should contain the same kind of American realism, coupled with the imaginary and absurd that made Magnolia into such a special movie, this video with Beck and Charlotte Gainsbourg is something for you.

The bridge:
Our Dublin correspondent informs us that the Samuel Beckett bridge opened yesterday in Dublin. Looks very similar to the Erasmus bridge in Rotterdam.

The word:
Continuous Partial Attention coined by Linda Stone in 1998 and describe the fact that many people never focus on only one thing, instead we multi task and sleep with our phones and always have our laptops so that we can chat with friends and what not.

'Continuous partial attention describes how many of us use our attention today. It is different from multi-tasking. The two are differentiated by the impulse that motivates them. When we multi-task, we are motivated by a desire to be more productive and more efficient. We're often doing things that are automatic, that require very little cognitive processing. We give the same priority to much of what we do when we multi-task — we file and copy papers, talk on the phone, eat lunch -- we get as many things done at one time as we possibly can in order to make more time for ourselves and in order to be more efficient and more productive. To pay continuous partial attention is to pay partial attention — CONTINUOUSLY. It is motivated by a desire to be a LIVE node on the network. Another way of saying this is that we want to connect and be connected. We want to effectively scan for opportunity and optimize for the best opportunities, activities, and contacts, in any given moment. To be busy, to be connected, is to be alive, to be recognized, and to matter.' from Wikipedia

You leave the training with your sweaty hair folded into your second hand hat. You bike and the wind slaps your sweaty face when you pass the Amstel river, its yellow light laughing at you and your tired body as you push yourself towards what now feels like the possibility of infinite sins. In your ipod Grinderman cuts your ears with dirty blues rock and aggressive guitars that sound like an industrial meltdown. You press your fingers harder against your handlebars, you see red traffic lights but you pay no attention, you go straight to the beat of a drum, beating in the tune of insanity. 'I drink a liter of cognac and threw her down on the bed' Nick Cave yells and you pass by the green and red Christmas lights and the expensive stores of Hoofdweg. You give the now deserted street that is paved with meaningless personal wealth the finger in your mind. You can't let go of your handlebars, you don't trust the effect it might have.

'I got the no pussy blues' rolls over you over and over without any breathing space. All that is left is the wind gusting against your every push on the pedal. But you pay no attention as you pass a tram with boring people in their boring lives as you cross Overtoom. You are out in the wind and darkness and Nick Cave is yelling No Pussy Blues in your ears. Your legs hurt but you keep pedaling up over bridges where the peaceful canals turn into evil fountains when Nick Cave crawl around in your head with his band and his deperation which he wears better than anyone else. You turn on to Kinkerstraat and the Christmas lights are tacky, No Pussy Blues keeps parading down you veins and it is not until you lock your bike in front of the drug dealers, and remove your hat that you return to the real world again. Suddenly the canals look peaceful and you loose your need to throw your finger against anyone, that is, before you push play again.

Do you remember when Christ Anderson came out with The Long Tail and predicted the end of the 'Block Buster culture'? People were suppose to go from mainstream culture to more specialized books, movies, music etc. that were more in tuned with their own needs and preferences. Of course you remember, well, turns out that this is not really happening, not in the way anticipated anyway. In a great exposé of modern media consumption the Economist analyzed what is happening in the world of books, news, music and film and came back with the conclusions that hits sell better than ever, and have a greater market share than ever. Nishé movies and music also do better then before, thus not totally busting the Long Tail theory. Everything in between is struggling, from medium sized newspapers who've seen their classified ads collapse, to musicians with a young fan base not buying albums anymore, the business of popular culture is relying more and more on big hits. And maybe Peter Cherning, who recently stepped down from a role overseeing the film and television business at News Corp, is right when he says that 'Hits are going to be the single biggest beneficiary of technology'. The Airportline thinks that this is a sad prospect. For those of you interested in contemporary media consumption I highly recommend this long but very informative article.

I am occupied with different tasks, so today I will give the word to F. Scott Fitzgerald, author of The Great Gatsby, and famously made fun in A Movable Feast by Ernest Hemingway for his weak tolerance for alcohol. The following quote was sent to me a few weeks ago and although I am sure many of you have read it, it deserves to be read again, cause it is beautifully written and based on an idea that I myself try and adhere to the best I can, namely, not judging people. So, while I continue to destroy my head and shoulders with some tedious tasks I give you part of the first page from The Great Gatsby:

In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.
“Whenever you feel like criticizing any one,” he told me, “just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.”
He didn’t say any more, but we’ve always been unusually communicative in a reserved way, and I understood that he meant a great deal more than that. In consequence, I’m inclined to reserve all judgments, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of not a few veteran bores. The abnormal mind is quick to detect and attach itself to this quality when it appears in a normal person, and so it came about that in college I was unjustly accused of being a politician, because I was privy to the secret griefs of wild, unknown men. Most of the confidences were unsought—frequently I have feigned sleep, preoccupation, or a hostile levity when I realized by some unmistakable sign that an intimate revelation was quivering on the horizon; for the intimate revelations of young men, or at least the terms in which they express them, are usually plagiaristic and marred by obvious suppressions. Reserving judgments is a matter of infinite hope. I am still a little afraid of missing something if I forget that, as my father snobbishly suggested, and I snobbishly repeat, a sense of the fundamental decencies is parcelled out unequally at birth.

Tomorrow Airportline will attend a conference called 'Sex, an evolutionary success story'. If I learn something I will let you know.

HELLO IT'S Noko Jeans! from Noko Jeans on Vimeo.

...is an interesting part of the Euronews newscast, and now unfortunately also the definition of the comment section on my blog. I know this is not because non of you have anything to say, instead it is a technical problem which I will try and have a look at during the week. However, my technical expertise is admittedly limited so who knows how long this might take. Until this happens enjoy the design and keep your thoughts to yourself, and if you have urgent things to report or complain about or celebrate or whatever, you will find me at hypotetisk@hotmail.com. I do apologize for this little mishap!

Over to something more interesting. Swedish jeans label Noko hit the headlines last week when they unveiled their new jeans, produced in the tourist paradise of... yes... let it come to you... North Korea! With a video (see above) that hits every storytelling idea in the marketing world they had a glorious aim to try and maybe open up the country a bit. And what better way to lead a country towards democracy that to produce some super limited trendy jeans? Unless the trendy Stockholm fashion house PUB would not have stopped the brand they day after its launch (since they did not want to sell jeans from a country where jeans are illegal, since it is seen as a symbol for American imperialism, and working conditions generally are famously poor) it could have been Panda Diplomacy 2.0. Now its just another example of the power of marketing (even I am writing about it!) and both The Guardian and The New York Times have taken notice.

Phoenix - 1901 - A Take Away Show from La Blogotheque on Vimeo.

In a recent interview one of the guitarists in Phoenix explained the band's home town, Versailles, as 'very beautiful and very boring'. Boredom of course occasionally bring great creativity and Phoenix is certainly a great example of this. With their love for R&B, soul and funk and their way of fusing these influences with guitar indie, and on their latest album, a flirt with a more electronic side, the band has risen to well deserved fame. Airportline has been a great fan of this band ever since they had a song in the movie Lost In Translation and I saw them pull of a fantastic show in the hipster heaven of Amsterdam's Trouw this past spring.

However, when I was in Paris last year no one seemed to know about them, hopefully that has changed now. It is still interesting to follow the band around Paris where they performed a few songs (with the acoustic version of One Time Too Many on a tourist bus being my favorite) from the best musicvideoblog around: La Blogotheque. Vincent Moon has once again produced some classic music moments (note the married couple in the 1901 video!) to add to his long list of great videos. Airportline's favourite before was the apartment show with Yeasayer and the street performance with Beirut. Both magnificent.

Phoenix - Lizstomania / One time too many - A Take Away Show from La Blogotheque on Vimeo.

Phoenix - Long distance call - A Take Away Show from La Blogotheque on Vimeo.

I just needed a change. Let me know if something looks weird to you (not including the fact that my most listened to artist last week was Simon & Garfunkel). You Mac people were complaining about the text layout before, is this better for your little fashionista machines or are there still issues?

I saw Whatever Works, Woody Allen’s latest movie, yesterday. The reviews have been mixed, both from friends and trusted writers. And even though it had its funny sides, and gave New York the great look it always gets from the eye of Woody, with its grand apartments, outdoor lunches and general visual pleasantness, it fails to reach high enough both regarding the comedy and acting. In the middle of the story an old Nobel price nominee with a death wish, played by Larry David, walks around. The story revolves on around the theme of luck and chance and portrays New York as the intellectual haven that can even make conservative swamp idiots into successful sexually liberated artists. People fall into each others lives, fall in love and out of love and turn gay and yeah, Woody made sure to press in so many parallel lives and stories in one and a half hours it is no wonder that it leaves you feeling a bit cheated. With so much life drama the characters never become more than comedic staples to turn the never stopping plot from racing through relationships and people as a normal Woody Allen movie on crack.

Even though its a nice movie I lack the emotional intenseness, the complex relationships and the characters in Woody’s best works. This is of course intended to be a light comedy, but it feels a bit rushed, a bit too loose and comfortable, and even though Larry David fits the bill as some kind of complaining Jewish math genius, his lack of any emotional engagement becomes tiring in the long run and feels misplaced and simplified when it suddenly arrives. While I would like to like this movie it simply reminded me of previous great Woody movies, but unfortunately it never managed to step out from the shade of its older cousins. Like ‘A O Scott’ (what kind of name is that?!) wrote in The New York Times:
‘Mr. Allen’s imagination has returned to Manhattan after that invigorating European sojourn afflicted by an extreme case of jet lag.’

A friend of mine had an operation in his head last Friday. Not that serious, he reassured in an email. But still. This is a song for you David, I hope all went well and that you are recovering nicely, this song might help you on the way, if you need to release some endorphins.

Shout Out Louds is an important band in my music upbringing. It was the first band I ever interviewed in person (the base player sat in dog poop when we sat down in a backstage area at the Arvika Music Festival) and their first EP, 100 degrees, and following single Shut Your Eyes are so overplayed that they barely hold together in my CD shelve back in Sweden. After two albums they are now gearing up to their third offering and a little nibble of a taste is avaliable right now with their new single Walls which you can see here above. Very nice video, and even though I'm not that found of the unmelodic intro, the song develops into a classic Shout Out Louds pop gem that eventually finds the band throwing themselves into all that desperation and The Cure pop they did so well on earlier songs like Tonight I Have To Leave It and Very Loud. The Airportline welcomes one of its favorite band back into the limelight. Go here to download the song for free

Noah And The Whale – First Day Of Spring (Mercury)

Broken love, a broken heart and broken dreams are fundamental concepts in human existence. They are emotional states that fill our best art with emotions because they are the core emotions in life. I think Noah and The Whale singer Charlie Fink is very aware of this. He is not afraid to state the obvious, to dress his songs up in clichés and simplistic descriptions of a broken heart. He knows it’s not about what you say but how you say it. He does occasionally put it beautifully also lyrically, he does, but as a listener you need not to be too concerned with some perhaps less novel descriptions of heartache. Noah and The Whale approached the need for love through beautiful orchestrations and a light-hearted melodies already on their surprisingly over looked folk pop debut album Peaceful The World Lays Me Down. These are feelings we all know but writing about them have proven to be difficult for many artist. There are those who claim that also Noah and the Whale can’t do this. I believe that these people are misguided and outright wrong. But as this is a matter of love and not hate I will not indulge in mudslinging. The topics Noah and The Whale circle around as heart breaking vulchers is how to move on from a broken relationship. It’s a magnifying glass into the feelings that this inevitably sad event so often lead to. This kind of albums often tend to become too navel gazing, too enforced, and too dramatically pompous. But when it is done with honesty, the most important ingredient in art that so many seem to forget, it can also catch you off guard, make you re-evaluate, think about things, and maybe face some truths that you were too afraid to face before. When art can hold your hand in these moments it can have both devastating and exhilarating effects.

I’ve talked a lot about Noah and The Whale since I heard their debut album and argued that it was one of the finest album of 2008. I always struggled to explain what it exactly was that made this London folk orchestra, who previously wore ridiculous colorful hipster wear, special. What made them hit my heart over and over while my surroundings shook their shoulders and moved on to something different. It can be frustrating to hear something that touches your soul while other people are unmoved. But I kept pedaling my bike over the Amstel river with Charlie Fink proclaiming that ‘if you give a little love you can get a little love of your own’ over piano and hand claps in Give a Little Love and thought that it was magical every time.

Perhaps it is my genuine interest for lost love and loneliness that immediately hit me when I listen to Noah and The Whale. Fans of Jens Lekman will recognize the upfront lyrics and the sincerity that I find rare among young Londoners. Its unfortunate that their colorful clothes and the, in indie circles, well covered relationship breakdown between Charlie Fink and Laura Marlin took focus from the bands music. When Laura went of on her own, becoming the poster girl for the new London folk movement with her pretty but ultimately somewhat disappointing (I know there are people that do not agree with this statement) debut Alas I Cannot Swim people assumed that Noah And The Whale would amount to nothing without her. Instead the vocalist break-up pushed the bands music into something much darker and emotionally engaging than before. At first glance it was quite a big step, but if you keep your eyes close to the lyrics you will still recognise the themes and sounds from their debut. Outstanding songs on the debut album such as Give A Little Love and Hold My Hand As I’m Lowered already touched the theme of lost love which on their 2009 output The First Days Of Spring bloomed into a haunting and captivating journey through the effects of love.

The First Days of Spring is an album that hurts to listen to, from the slow starting The First Say Of Spring, with its build up and crescendo end, to the album closing song, My Door Is Always Open, the band takes a long and sparsely orchestrated ride into a landscape that from time to time beat with some hope but ultimately still is in knee deep in mourning. The fluctuating emotional states occasionally becomes angry, occasionally filled with a feeling that it was for the best, occasionally portraying the feeling loneliness, and other times drawing a line and moving on. It is like looking into a journal where someone has written down his thoughts without editing, without hiding his emotions in distancing metaphors.

‘and its been a while since I starred at the stars’ Fink sings over a lonely guitar and sparse piano keys in Our Window as the world looks different while reflected in a lost promise. In stand out track Blue Skies Fink starts out boldly stating that ‘this is a song for anyone with a broken heart’. I’ve sent it to friends who have understood just how he feels. ‘This is the last song I will write while you’re even on my mind’ he continues as the song develops into an anthem celebrating the forward motion that life always needs to have. Like Alvy Singer says in Woody Allen’s master peace Annie Hall, ‘relationships are like sharks, they have to keep moving forward otherwise they’ll die’.

I’ve been surprised in my own life of the heavy impact, and the brutal loneliness that can come out of the end of a relationship. There are many artists that try and put these feelings into the music they make. But while so many choose to write about these feelings through metaphors or poetic verse Noah And The Whale goes straight on the pure emotions, and combines this with Charlie Finks voice that sounds like its been frozen in that exact moment when a relationship falters, when both parties realizes that all roads that leads forward are paved with sadness and disappointments. Although I don’t recognize myself in the stories of the album, I feel the emotions that are dealt with in these songs, I understand what Charlie fink and his voice is singing about and I can feel the honesty that travels through the songs on this album.

Broken love, a broken heart and broken dreams will always be important and difficult concepts to write and make music about, Noah and the Whale shows that disclosing honesty and dressing it up with well orchestrated pop numbers is an excellent way of doing it. The First Day of Spring might not make you smile, or turn a gray day into sunshine, but it might be the best sad album about lost love that I have heard since Ryan Adams album Heartbreaker and Red House Painters Songs For A Blue Guitar. It might make you realize that there are more people than you that go through heartache. It can be a comforting realization at times.