Finally! I have been to a show at the Troubadour without drama! Laura Marling and Alessi's Ark were both polite, happy to be there, an appreciative of their audience. Either that or they were just British. In any case a thoroughly enjoyable show.
Miss Marling is a performer that has interested me ever since I heard her singing backup on Noah and the Whale's first album. When you hear a voice like her's singing backup it just feels like a crime. Fortunately she also does her own music.
Personality wise I would say she is soft spoken, kinda perma-high and floats around on the ether around her. This kind of toasty chill puts the audience at ease. She speaks very little directly to the audience, but it is enough to keep them engaged.
One interesting concept is that Laura Marling does not do encores on principal.
When I was her age I decided I no longer needed to write with punctuation etc so every message I sent to my genius, cute, hippy (and most important patient) girlfriend at the time read like a bad ee cummings stream of consciousness. Eventually I got over it and accepted the need for proper punctuation. In any case, that she is doing things like that means that she is a) running the show and b) experimenting. I have really been rooting for her to find herself, because the raw talent is behind her, but she has been molded too much by others around her/ dating her.
Some of her new songs were very riffy and more jazz like than folk. While its not something that appealed to me as much, it means that she is really starting to find her own way. The issue with riffy was that it kinda didn't feel like the riffs went anywhere or that they had any relevance to the song. Instead they were distracting from the song.
Other than that she had some great material that she played. The full band setup included cello, uke, upright bass, guitars of all sorts, drums, banjo, mando, keys, and what I am going to guess was a tenor horn. Almost all of those were active at the same time which lead to a nice full sound.
