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Laura Marling - 'Cross Your Fingers'

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Fraser McAlpine | 09:29 UK time, Tuesday, 3 June 2008

Laura MarlingI remember (unsuccessfully) begging Fraser to let me review a Laura Marling single a while back because at the time I had just read an interview with her and she fascinated me. Admittedly I hadn't heard any of her music by that point, but she was a female singer/songwriter with that air of being slightly outspoken, and I've always had a soft spot for people who fall into that category. I blame my teenage crushes on Lauren Laverne and Louise Wener for this.

It's a relief then that having finally had an opportunity to review one of her singles for ChartBlog, it's a song that I really like. This song skirts both sides of serious and playful - the lyrics are quite intense, but there's something quite whimsical about the melody, with its sparing use of a glockenspiel and the waterwheel-like sense of cascading motion at the end of the chorus which, weirdly, I think lends the song a bit more gravitas by taking the puff out of its own sails, slightly.

To my mind, one of the worst things a songwriter can do is have a misplaced sense of their own importance and I think Laura Marling sidesteps that potential pitfall here pretty expertly - she's obviously more concerned in making good music than Important Music, and I'm hugely appreciative of that.

I love the sound of her voice on this track - it's crisp, clear and dry, and reminds me a little bit of Nerina Pallot, whom I also think is fantastic. The song itself is short, and I don't have a problem with that, because I've always been a firm believer that a story is only ever as long as it needs to be and there's no sense in staying around when you've said all you need to say, but from a purely selfish perspective I could've listened to more of it quite happily.

I guess that while you should never judge a book by its cover, there's a lot to be said for judging an artist by an interview.

Four starsDownload: Out now
CD Released: June 9th

(Steve Perkins)

Comments

  • Comment number 1.

    i love this girl. her voice is so unique and warm and all her songs are really good.. but on her cd, the two songs on the video above are separate, the pausey bit in the middle is an actual change of track to crawled out of the sea: is it really one song??

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