Laura Marling: 'Alas I Cannot Swim'

Unless you’ve had a real tough break, at the age of 17 you have yet to experience just how shit life can really be. You’ve not had to deal with real heartbreak, loss or disappointment - although at the time we may all think we had. Most of us couldn’t see beyond love because most of us didn’t think there was ‘a beyond’. As naïve as it seems to us now, back then we really were living in a bit of fantasy, even if at the time it felt like reality. And it’s this naivety that makes that makes ‘Alas I Cannot Swim’ in parts very special.

When Laura Marling sings in her undeniably incredible voice about love, it is sung so genuinely that you can’t help but be anything but charmed by it all. 'It’s not like I believe in everlasting love', from stunning album opener ‘Ghosts’ sets an almost Disney-esque fairytale world. This surreal vision continues with much success throughout many other tracks like ‘Tap At My Window’ and ‘Shine’. It’s a world where candles are used instead of torches (‘Night Terror’) and the birds sing to calm us down (‘My Manic And I’). To Laura this is her reality, to us it’s the sound of the naïve fantasy we were all once so invested in. It feels nostalgic and it sounds sublime.

It’s when Marling starts to stray away from this theme with songs like ‘Failure’ and ‘You're No God’, and in that teen angst way turns rather predictably to subjects like death and depression that the flaws become visible. Although it’s hard to criticize the 17 year old, you do feel a little as if you’re being preached to by someone who doesn’t really know. And as her connection with the songs becomes more distant and the intimacy starts to fade, you realise that if you want to hear more of the truly special stuff you are just going to have to be patient and wait for her to live it first. ‘Alas I Cannot Swim’, although flawed, is a strong start to what should be a very long and exciting career.

Life sucks! But the thought of Laura Marling sound tracking it for us really doesn’t.

Released on 11th February 2008 by EMI.

Written by Ivan Berry.