Alas I Cannot Swim by Laura Marling
Alas, I Cannot Swim is the debut studio album by British singer-songwriter Laura Marling. The album was nominated for the 2008 Mercury Music Prize. The album was produced by the lead vocalist of her previous band Noah and the Whale, Charlie Fink, and was initially released on 4 February 2008, conventionally released a week later. Marling had released a number of smaller singles and EPs before releasing her debut album. She told Neil McCormick of The Daily Telegraph: "I did my first EP just to get rid of songs I didn't like. They were just so awful. I don't think I really found out what I was doing until about six months after I signed a deal." "The whole album is about being between 18 and 19; about love."
On her debut, 17-year-old Laura Marling is torn between tradition and cynicism, and makes magic from the gap between the two. She’s a sharp interpreter of folk tropes, as proven by the gothic “Night Terror” and fiddle-laden “The Captain and the Hourglass”, yet possessed of her own idiosyncratic talents. “Old Stone” and “Failure” are confidently spare, while the glorious chorus of “Ghosts” perfectly juxtaposes romance and realism: “It’s not like I believe in/Everlasting love.”
