The Beat Surrender

Despite Laura Marlings young age (She’s just turned 18… I think) she sounds like a singer who has been through the ringer over the years and has come out the other end smiling. I don’t know a great deal about her back-story, but if this isn’t the case then she has a tremendously mature outlook, not just on her song-writing and vocal delivery but also on life in general.

Where as most girls in their teens tend to get hung up solely on boys, make up and going out with their friends, Marling delves far deeper into relationships than schoolyard crushes and displays a frighteningly intricate expose of her soul on these subjects.

There really isn’t anything like a singer be it solo or in a band that sings from the heart as if every word they utter is coming from the heart and that’s Laura Marlings trump card here on Alas I Cannot Swim, you believe every word means something to her.

The result is a wonderful and very confident debut album that displays slight folk leanings with a healthy dose of pop nouse. Her recent single Ghosts is a shining example of that, a twinkling pop song that reminds you of people like Gemma Hayes and Kirsty McCall.

Musically she veers from the dramatic sound of a track like Night Terror to the stripped back sound of Tap At My Window that opens gently until the orchestration kicks in.

The Captain And The Hourglass is one of my favourites on the album, it has a country twang to it but again is catchy enough to stay with you. She’s at her best sometimes when she keeps it really simple, am earnest track like Shine is a brilliant example of this, her voice is enough to carry the track on its own and she doesn’t over fuss it with too many instruments.

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