August 18, 2008
Swimming Lessons
With her short blond hair and alabaster complexion, Laura Marling looks as innocent as a choirboy. She has the voice of an angel, though in the genre-bending folksongs of her debut, Alas I Cannot Swim (out tomorrow), it’s an angel who has fallen from grace.
The 18-year-old songwriter from the bucolic south coast of England is a study in contrasts. A neo-folkie, she’s done time as a featured vocalist for post-punkers The Rakes (“Suspicious Eyes”) and the neo-jam band Mystery Jets (the UK hit “Young Love”). Her burnished contralto echoes the folk purity of such forebears as Sandy Denny and Linda Thompson, but the sour romantic opener “Ghosts” and the jaunty reincarnation fable “Cross Your Fingers” rightly draw comparisons to contemporaries Kate Nash and Regina Spektor.
Produced by Noah and the Whale’s Charlie Fink (a former bandmate), Alas I Cannot Swim’s currents of old and new, innocence and experience, ripple with spirited contradictions. Or, as Marling says on the hidden track: ‘There’s a house across the river, but alas I cannot swim; I’ll live my life regretting that I never jumped in.’ Marling, we’re sure, will have nothing to regret.
Alas I Cannot Swim will be available tomorrow from Astralwerks Records.
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