Although Noah and the Whale's first record brought them fame and a fair amount of critical derision (their debut, Peaceful, The World Lays Me Down, received intense flak from Pitchfork and currently bares their lowest score on Metacritic), the British band have since strayed from the ukulele-inflected whimsy of their early work. Now on their fourth album, Noah and the Whale seem securely fixed in a more sober-sounding place. Heart of Nowhere is mature, competent, and listenable enough. And yet the bright-eyed innocence and cheerful hooks that initially made the band lovable no matter how much critics sneered has vanished, leaving behind something far less engaging.
After an instrumental introduction and the orchestral textures of the album's Talking Heads-influenced title track, Heart of Nowhere moves down a tame seventies slide. Charlie Fink's songs of friends and lovers past and present exist in a rock n' limbo, stagnant, languid, yet never loathsome. The divisive risks the band once took are largely traded for mid-level settling.
Heart of Nowhere is in no way a failure or a disgrace. The music is tasteful, thoughtfully produced, and occasionally recalls the lost sounds of great(er) bands (particularly on the rather strong first few tracks). By the album's end, however, monotony and lazy lyricism set in, and Heart of Nowhere eventually begins to feel as empty as its title's claim of destination. Noah and the Whale may find critics' more tempered reactions to the record easier to handle than the hurtful "let's point our fingers and laugh" ire they at times encountered, but that doesn't make the album's respectable lethargy preferable to the gutsy charms of their initial, wrongfully maligned, efforts.
Grade: B-
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