Music : Alas I Cannot Swim

Rating: - A stunning talent is born
This is just a great, great record. I saw Laura Marling support Rufus Wainwright last year, and didn't think she was anything special, but since then she seems to have completely re-invented herself. For a young woman of 18, her lyrics are incredibly mature and engaging - just compare her to someone like Kate Nash and her mockney warbling about boy troubles, and you despair of the gulf between their public profiles. Sometimes they have a quite nightmarish quality to them - literally on Night Terror, but also in the dark fable The Captain and the Hourglass ('behind every tree is a cutting machine' gives me the shivers). They can also be very funny, though (Failure laments another musician's waste of talent: 'he lost poetic ethic, and his songs are pathetic'). Marling's beautiful voice adds real emotional heft, too. Just listen to her on Your Only Doll, where a young woman suffers at the hands of an abusive partner - not autobiographical, I hope, but she conjures a whole, benighted life with complete conviction and tragic power in the space of four minutes. Likewise, on the gorgeous 'Tap at My Window', where the character berates her progenitors - 'Father I love you, but how can you watch as I push her away/ I cannot forgive you for bringing me up this way' - Marling inhabits this so completely that you worry what her own parents make of it.

Combine all this with wonderful tunes, superb arrangements, and a healthy sprinking of magic dust that makes the whole album rise above its estimable parts, and you have one of the finest debut albums of the decade. I can only hope that word of mouth will eventually bring this record the global success it so richly deserves.

PS Don't miss the lovely, trad-folk title track hidden at the end.

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Rating: - It's all gone swimmingly
Female singer-songwriters are like buses (not necessarily in appearance, you understand, and I'm not naming names): you wait ages and then three turn up at once. We seem to be inundated with them at the moment, and one who deserves the spotlight but isn't getting it so much (because she hasn't been seen shooting her mouth off in public or falling out of nightclubs) is Laura Marling. Her debut "Alas, I Cannot Swim" has also been somewhat overlooked because it is not in a pop/r'n'b idiom and she doesn't sing about, well, falling out of nightclubs. She appears to draw inspiration from an earlier generation of folk-rock singers, the likes of Joni Mitchell, Melanie, Jacqui McShee (of Pentangle), Linda Thompson etc.

The subject matter of her songs is a long way removed from the infatuations of (supposedly) hip urbanites trying to buy tequila at 4.00 a.m. too. Her lyrics sound rooted in the land, influenced more by Thomas Hardy or, in modern terms, Graham Swift than by the usual Camden Town obsessions. For someone who is still a teenager she displays a very mature take on difficult subjects such as parental strife, mental illness, death. God only knows what she might have to say by the time she's twenty-five. This is not to say the album is miserable. It is quite introspective, quite melancholy, but not all sad. "You're No God" and "My Manic and I" have an austere humour and light, lilting style. "Cross Your Fingers" has an almost nursery rhyme feel. And like many nursery rhymes, if you think about it, the words are much darker than the tune. The deft, basic acoustic folk backing is augmented here and there by strings and accordion.

So "Alas, I Cannot Swim" is not a party record. You might not play it getting ready to go out on Saturday night. But you might when you get home at whatever time on Sunday. And sitting at home any time, with a malt whisky, not an alcopop.

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Rating: - of the new crop of female brits she's the best
Well first of all this is only the 2nd review i've felt moved to post (check out 'my friend the chocolate cake' by the way, great band ,ignore the silly name)I've been collecting music for over 30 years now (no not a boring old fart,i hope)Over the last 15 years or so i've found it difficult to find anything new or/and exciting. So have developed quite an eclectic taste... Cocteau twins,70's Miles Davis,MMW,DCD,Kate Rusby, Laura Veirs,Harold Budd,Bill Nelson,Durutti Column,Nouvelle vague,PCO,lots of different genres. I really like female singer songwriters..Joni,Suzanne Vega,Kristin Hersh,Kathryn Williams,Isabel Campbell,HeidiBerry(all wonderful)Let's face it there's a lot of over Americanised dross out there. I pre-ordered the album after seeing her on Later..Liked her performance.While waiting for the album i bought the 'ghosts'single. Oh no ... i didn't like it.Held out for the album expecting a disapointment. But no it's absolutley amazing.She was just 17 when she recorded it (forget that, it shouldn't matter)but it's still an amazing achievement.I'm reluctant to try and describe it (read the other reviews they do a better job than i) but the bottom line is,great music is great music, and talent is talent.It's been many years since i've played an album over and over and over like i've played this.And i now like the track 'ghosts' too in the context of the album.A triumph.You won't be disapointed it gets better with every listen.

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Rating: - Alas, I cannot stop listening to this album....
The music on Laura Marling's debut album isn't entirely what I expected but, in a different way it's a lot more than I expected. What I thought would be a quiet, subtle, poppy folk album turned out to be a bold, creative, eclectic and incredibly exciting poppy folk album. Considering how youg Laura Marling is, `Alas, I Cannot Swim', has the markings of an artist ten years older.

The lyrics are clever, interesting and at times quite thought provoking. The music is, admittely, secondary to Marling's voice but remains varied and creative enough to superseed that assumption. The focal point though, is indeed her voice. It's fantastic. Nothing more needs saying on the matter.

The majority of the tracks are pleasant, stupidly enjoyable poppy folk tracks; Old Stone, Tap At My Window, The Captain & the Hourglass. But there is the odd curveball thrown in. Ghosts is the opening track and doesn't sound quite like anything else on the album somehow and is definitley a higlight. Cross You Fingers sounds fairly upbeat but boasts the a chorus of; "cross your fingers, hold your toes, we're all gonna die when the building blows." The opening lyric to My Manic & I; "he wants to die in a lake in Geneva, where the mountains can cover the shape of his nose." Unorthodox indeed for a pop record, which intrigues me even more.
Crawled Out of the Sea is the biggest curveball and possibly the most effective; it's a kind folk shanty, complete with accordion and serves to break up the album and is even stated as an "(Interlude)".

It's my view that Marling is strongest when branching out a tad like this; where a natural eschewing of convention needs nurturing. I prefer my music a little darker and when Marling edges over slightly there is a whole lot more depth of meaning which suggests she'll be around a whole lot more in the future.

So, `Alas I Cannot Swim' boasts a very promising young talent and if she can fill an entire album with tracks as strong as the best on here, then she'll be a force to be reckoned with. I know it's only February but this could be my album of the year so far.

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Rating: - Heartsick folk-pop with a natural and unpretentious intimacy
The debut album of 18-year-old Laura Marling, who grew up in Eversley, near Reading, is a very welcome surprise. With thirteen quiet and confident songs, she shuffles into the spotlight and onto a musical landscape dominated by balsy retro songs, mockney accents and diva attitudes. Marling - with delicate lyrics, a soft, hushed delivery and folky arrangements accompanied by strings - works against this tide.

Listening to 'Alas, I Cannot Swim', you feel you are falling like Alice in Wonderland into a theatrical dreamland where the ghosts in a lover's nightmares are warned off ("If they want you, well, then they're gonna have to fight me"), where compassion is universal ("Don't cry child / You've got so much more to live for") and where melancholy is an intimate rival ("I need shine - stay away from my light"). Her lyrics don't betray her age - they defy it. She is deft at unraveling poetical turns of phrase: "The ring on my finger slips to the ground, a gift to the gutter". On my favourite track - Shine, on which she is only accompanied by an acoustic guitar and the birds heard tweeting at the close - she sings brilliantly emotively ("I am honest, not a shouter").

The understated, low-key way she has of singing was well showcased on Later with Jools Holland where she sung New Romantic (it's a shame the track didn't make it onto the album), avoiding the audience's glare and seemingly singing to her shoes.

There are a few songs that teeter too close to the twee and at least one that seems overproduced and let down by blander lyrics and instrumentation. Nevertheless this is a stunning debut. If she manages to eschew the mythologisation that journalists are bound to impose on her (reviews have already started referring to "her father teaching her the blues in front of the family fire"!) and if she manages to sidestep - or boldly ignore - the trapdoors of tweeness and wistfulness, she has an enviable career ahead of her.

Standout tracks: Shine, Failure, Night Terror, Crawled out of the Sea, Your Only Doll (Dora)

For fans of: Anna Ternheim, Kathryn Williams, Beth Orton, Ane Brun, Kimya Dawson