I was fortunate enough to see Noah and the Whale at Spaceland for free a few months ago. Outside the concert, while looking for a cigarette to bum, I ran into Zack Wiesinger who just so happened to be opening the first pack of cigarettes he'd ever purchased. He showed me and my girlfriend a cartoon he'd drawn and scored on his iPhone. He was a cool guy. He said he'd hit us up before his next show, but he didn't, and we couldn't have made it anyway because we were seeing Kings of Leon on the same night. Too bad.

But Noah and the Whale are brilliant live. They look like they sound, as if they're practicing for a part in a Wes Anderson film. They'd blend right in, too, on Steve Zissou's ship, on the stage of Rushmore Academy, aboard the Darjeeling Limited, or in the Tenenbaum's backyard, and that's definitely part of their charm.

Second Lover is probably one of the most obtuse songs off their album, about guy having some difficulty reconciling the distance between himself and his online paramour, (something I had quite a bit of experience with when I was a tween, hanging out in IRC chatrooms, afloat alone in the dangerous waters of the internet). While it's sad [and, if you pay attention, most of their songs are sad songs wrapped in cotton candy (and, if you pay attention, most Wes Anderson movies are sad movies wrapped in cotton candy, so we've got like meta-reference going on here)] the ending of the song picks up and it's simply blissful.