91�ȱ�

It's been a tough few months for Noah And The Whale.

The London folk outfit's second album The First Days Of Spring, released in August, saw lead singer Charlie Fink pour open his heart about the break down of his personal relationship with singer Laura Marling.

Still aching, it's a pain he has to revisit each night when performing the intimate songs live but one he says is getting easier.

"Yeah I think so," says Fink staring at his feet. "Playing a personal song is such a surreal process anyway. You kind of have this layer of relief about it.

"It's strange because a lot of the album is about loss and with what's happened this week you start thinking you're singing about your guitar."

Stolen gear

Indeed, if licking his emotional wounds night after night wasn't difficult enough, the quartet's equipment was stolen from outside a gig in Manchester last week (29 September).

At the time Fink described the loss as "devastating". Since then two men have been arrested on suspicion of theft.

"We've managed to find the trailer that got stolen but it hasn't got anything in it," says Fink.

"We've got the number plate of a van and two people have been arrested so that is promising.

"We're going to carry on doing all the shows on the tour and everything so it's business as normal."

'Rocky' sound

Business as normal for Noah And The Whale means already writing new songs.

"It feels like a little relief," sighs Fink. "You can just go in there and write the songs and play the songs and it can be simple."

"I'm listening to a lot of Lou Read at the moment and that's kind of creeping into the sounds. I want to do some rock stuff on this record because I want to do it whilst we're all young and rocking."

It's a side to the band they've visited briefly before with a collection of uncharacteristically raw punk tunes released under the title The A Sides last Christmas.

"It might be slightly more sophisticated than that," he smiles.

"That was just about energy and playing the room together. The way we've been thinking about it is like Crazy Horse with strings."

"It's a fun process to do that without worrying about a film at all now."

For the moment they can enjoy the fact that the movie which Charlie directed and wrote to accompany The First Days of Spring is enjoying praise outside the music bubble from film critics such as the 91�ȱ�'s Mark Kermode.

"Of this whole project the thing I feel is the greatest success of it," he beams.

"The philosophy behind doing it was to create an album with a film which was a fully immersive experience, a whole that was greater than the sum of its parts.

"It feels like on this album we've picked up some new audience," he settles on. "I think that the same is true for the reverse though.