We Are Basic Life

Laura Marling “Alpha Shallows”

Nearly every review of Laura Marling’s second album comments on her youth, which could be considered hacky, but it’s ultimately crucial in understanding what she has accomplished. She is 20 now, and was in her late teens when she wrote these songs, and yet the maturity and sophistication of this music comes across like the work of a veteran of twice her age. It’s not simply that her songs tend to be fairly dour and bleak — that’s a default tone for very many young artists who wish to be taken seriously — but in that she expresses herself with such understated precision and emotional perspective. At times she’s a bit too measured and polite, though this is to be expected of artists working in the folk genre. She’s at her best, though, when she focuses her weariness into a nearly religious intensity. (Pagan, to be specific.) “Alpha Shallows” builds from a solemn, simple British folk song to something more yearning, and climaxes with a cathartic swell of vocal harmony. The conclusion feels optimistic, if not outright triumphant. It’s not cheap or sentimental, either — it truly seems like something that was hard-earned.

Buy it from Amazon.