laura marling: alas i cannot swim

Alas I Cannot Swim is the debut album from Reading teenager Laura Marling, but the chances are you’ve already heard her distinctive voice. As well as releasing two EPs of her own, she’s toured with Jamie T, been a part time member of Noah & The Whale, and recorded tracks with The Rakes and Mystery Jets. She’s clearly benefited from surrounding herself with so many musical influences; her first long-player is a fully formed classic.

From the opening bars of immaculate first single ‘Ghosts’ to the closing moments of the title track, surreptitiously tacked onto the end of ‘Your Only Doll (Dora)’, the quality control dial is turned up to eleven. The pop sensibilities of ‘Cross Your Fingers’ sees her take a different tack and yet sit perfectly alongside the haunted darkness of last year’s EP title track ‘My Manic & I’. And she doesn’t stick to the well-worn acoustic guitar and piano format; violin, accordion, pedal steel, trumpet and French horn all make an appearance, never insensitively intruding and lending the songs all kinds of subtle contrasts.

The sheer brilliance of the newer songs proves that Marling continues to develop as a writer, and fast. The slightly grating naivety of early tracks ‘New Romantic’ and ‘London Town’, both of which have wisely been left off the album, is nowhere to be found. In their place are twelve songs that sound confident and substantial. Even when she’s embodying the character of a victim of sexual abuse, her austere phrasing makes her wholly believable. Marling’s voice, too, has matured since her last recordings. Mixing playfulness with a knowing wink, she recalls Aimee Mann, Joni Mitchell and, at times, Eliza Carthy, but Laura has something altogether more contemporary and fresh, and appealingly English.

With the album format allegedly on its last legs, all thirty-eight minutes of Alas I Cannot Swim bucks the trend by playing very much like a cohesive whole. With Noah & The Whale’s Charlie Fink taking on production duties, the record sounds neither overproduced or lacking in colour, complementing the songs without engulfing them. In reaction to the increasing commoditisation of music Marling has said, “I want people to treasure it, not just my songs, but treasure music.” It’s a sentiment worthy of her musical icon Will Oldham, who would surely approve of Marling’s precious way with a lyric, and judging from the amount of effort that has gone into fashioning the limited edition ‘Song Box’ packaging of the album, she’s clearly not in the habit of short-changing those who will listen.

With that in mind, it’s hard to see how anyone couldn’t treasure such a wonderful debut.

[EMI; February 11, 2008]

Written by: Richard Steele

Tags: alas i cannot swim, laura marling

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 28th, 2008 at 12:52 am and is filed under albums & EPs, reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.