Charlie Fink: 'I've accepted who I am'
The problem with having a hit album is that it takes over your life. And so when Noah and the Whale's third album,Last Night on Earth, went top 10 in the UK, and drew so much admiration in the US that they had to tour there three times, Charlie Fink – the group's singer and main songwriter – found himself on the promotional treadmill. "There was a week where we did Japan, Australia, Canada and Chicago in eight days. And I hate flying."
There were also shows in parts of America that have not wholeheartedly embraced English pop-rock made by sharp-suited young men who have never wrestled a steer. "Lincoln, Nebraska, was a bit tough," Fink nods. "Not a great deal of people there. For us, the coasts are great, then some spots in the South, then it's getting to Chicago. On the way to Chicago is where you find the challenges."
And so the news that Noah and the Whale's fourth album was inspired, in part, by their time on the road might prompt a shiver of horror from those familiar with the "road album" genre. Songs about grey hotel rooms in the midwestern dawn? About missing you, babe, cos you're so far away? About that girl back in Milwaukee who gave all the lovin' a lonely man could need? It's all right. You can come back. There's none of that onHeart of Nowhere.
"One of the things that sparked the ideas for the album was a friend getting married," Fink says. "It was the first time someone in my group of friends had got engaged. It was weird coming back from 18 months on the road to hear that. It's strange on a couple of levels: I didn't know what was going on in my friends' lives because I'd been away for so long, and also because that seems like a defining moment in a group of people's lives."
And so the transition to adulthood – with marriage as one of the final tollbooths – became the central conceit of the album. "One of the main themes, beyond nostalgia and the end of adolescence, is acceptance. It starts off with a first song that's a melodramatic story of a kid wanting to break away from his family, basically, to acceptance of your family and who you are and who you want to be as a man."
"Themes" have been Fink's big thing over the last few years. The second Noah and the Whale album,The First Days of Spring, dealt with his heartbreak at the end of his relationship with Laura Marling (who had sung on its predecessor, 2008'sPeaceful, the World Lays Me Down). The third,Last Night on Earth, told short stories in song, a deliberate move away from autobiography. This one, he says, is "more personal. In a way that's a good thing, because once you've made a personal record, people trust you a bit more, which I think is important."
Fink would once have been surprised himself at the idea he would deal with themes. Noah's breakthrough hit,5 Years Time, opened with desperately unpromising lyrics: "Oh well, in five years' time we could be walking round a zoo/ With the sun shining down over me and you/ And there'll be love in the bodies of the elephants, too." Ahem. Mind you, its gaucheness is perhaps unsurprising, given that Fink has been a lyrical autodidact: he'd listen to melodies first, lyrics coming a distant second. "When I first started writing," he says, "I'd buy packs of 10 CDs for £5. They were covered in masking tape, so you wouldn't know what was in there. I'd take out the booklet and write songs for those lyrics, not listening to the CD – I'd find the melody for them. I didn't really want to write lyrics."
Sitting in Fink's new home in a leafy inner-London suburb, it's hard not to think that maybe contentment has befallen him. It's a nice house, tastefully decorated and furnished (a friend's girlfriend, studying interior design, did it for him), and I wonder if all the advertising deals for 5 Years Time – cars, crisps, cereal, all around the globe – have paid for it. I also wonder if Fink now being settled explains whyHeart of Nowhereis the first Noah album to sound as though it was made by the same band as the one before, for here again is the sleek, machine-tooled MOR rock ofLast Night on Earth.
I'm reading too much into it. Fink says the main reason for the continuation is that after 18 months of touring that style, it felt like the natural way to play. And that style itself came from happenstance, from a viewing of a DVD, not from some carefully thought-out strategy. "Our guitarist Fred [Abbott] – a big Tom Petty fan – lent me the Peter Bogdanovich documentaryRunnin' Down a Dream [which tells the story of Petty's career], and that is outstanding. It was watching that, hearing the way he talks about songwriting, the way they're a band, and this gang – I loved that. That was the moment."
The change meant Noah and the Whale suddenly had fans who liked the old songs and didn't care about the new ones, and vice versa. And there was the odd moment, when the band debuted their new sound at Bush Hall in London early in 2011, when they played 5 Years Time. The crowd, politely respectful through the unfamiliar songs, suddenly erupted, while Fink stood with the look of a boy told he can't have his trifle until he's eaten his sprouts.
He says, carefully: "I feel I've learned so much about songwriting that it's strange to revisit something that came from a point where I was learning. But what I've realised is how it connects with the audience is something pretty amazing, so when you do play that song and you get that reaction, it has an energy that makes it enjoyable." He adds, a few moments later: "When you're touring, you're an entertainer. You have to acknowledge that."
Noah and the Whale have risen. Their contemporaries have risen further still – Marling is the reigning queen of young British folk; Mumford & Sons – one of whose members was an early touring partner of Fink – have become one of the world's biggest bands. But Fink is sanguine. "We were just a bunch of friends hanging out. I know some people now making music in London and there's nothing like that, no community in that way. It was amazing that it all happened and I'm proud to be part of it. It's absolutely crazy what's happened since."
Heart of Nowhere is released on Mercury tomorrow. A four-week Sunday night residency at the Palace theatre, London, continues until 19 May. Tour details:noahandthewhale.com
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