
Image credit: Finn Beales
Indie rock quintet Noah and The Whale lived up to their reputation as one of the most down to earth bands in the music business with their show rider for The Hay Festival. They asked for locally sourced homemade flapjacks, which were provided by the Festival’s own master baker Marian Lally and lovingly photographed for The Telegraph’s Hay Festival live blog.
Playing to a packed crowd they treated a sell-out audience to a thumping set of the rousing anthems that made their breakthrough third album, Last Night On Earth, a platinum seller in the UK.
At Hay on the first night of their tour to launch their fourth album Heart of Nowhere, which was released to critical acclaim in the UK on 6 May, the five-piece also treated the crowd to a multitude of new songs, each of which was greeted with rapturous applause. As befits any good rock gig, frontman Charlie Fink urged the crowd to make some noise and get to their feet, which the crowd greeted with infectious enthusiasm. A large group of the band’s younger fans danced their way all the way through the set in Hay’s very own answer to a mosh pit, which stretched all the way down one end of The Barclays Pavilion.
As they closed to ecstatic applause it was clear that Noah and the Whale’s bittersweet, catchy tunes were indeed the perfect finale to the first day of The Hay Festival.








