Laura Marling, 'Alas I Cannot Swim'

2007 was a great year for Laura Marling. She toured with Jamie T, released two EPs, performed and recorded with Noah & the Whale, and even managed a debut performance on Later…With Jools Holland. There’s no doubt about it; the pale-skinned singer is the new darling of folk music, and at only 18, she has a long and promising career ahead of her, certainly if her debut is anything to go by. Backed by the Noah lads, Marling has created an album that has a maturity and self-assuredness that belies her young age. Her voice is natural, pure and effortless, and her way with words on these tales of heartbreak suggests that she has grown up fast. Take the world-weary chorus of opener ‘Ghosts’, for example: “lover please, do not fall to your knees,/It’s not like I believe in everlasting love”. The joy of these songs lies in their simplicity. Marling’s voice and acoustic guitar are enriched by Tom Hobden’s string arrangements and the crackled backgrounds of unedited noise: here a clink of china, there a pencil on paper. With many other singer-songwriters these unedited sections would sound contrived, but here they only reinforce the sense that Laura Marling was born to do this. The ironically-titled ‘Failure’ swells with a beautiful optimism, and ‘Night Terror’s sparse arrangements are shiver-inducing. And although some songs do not match the intensity of these two, there is more than enough evidence here that this precocious talent has a lot more to give.


7.0/10

EMI, released 11/02/08

Laura Marling's official website

Ghosts (mp3)