Laura Marling September 17, 2011

Laura Marling, who started out -- briefly but auspiciously -- with a stint in the group Noah and the Whale, was a mere 16 when she independently released her first singles and almost immediately gained serious stature as a key figure on Britain’s burgeoning young folk scene, alongside such artists and friends as singer-actor Johnny Flynn and Mumford & Sons. The two startlingly self-assured albums that followed -- Alas I Cannot Swim (2008) and I Speak Because I Can (2010) -- brought Marling an extraordinary level of acclaim in her homeland, with each of them in turn being nominated for the U.K.’s prestigious Mercury Prize. She subsequently won a 2011 Brit Award, England’s equivalent to the Grammy, as Best British Female and an NME Award as Best Solo Artist. While so many artists of any age attempt to locate their inner child, Marling, with a sometime steely gaze, measures the prerogatives of youth against the looming realities of adulthood – the spectre of mortality, the betrayals of love, the yearning for companionship, the need for independence. Of late, England has produced some impressively sophisticated young pop artists like Adele, James Blake and the XX, but the folk-oriented Marling remains in a class of her own. As the Times Of London recently posited, “Who else is making music as ambitious, as haunting, as centuries-straddling, as thought-provoking and artistically tenacious as this? And the answer is: nobody. No, really. Not a soul.”
Tickets will go on sale Friday 7/29 at 10am.