It's Saturday night and Frankie Cocoza has left the X Factor stage and just to prove I really don’t care (to myself at least) I'm not even going to spell-check his name. I'm left with a feeling of depression and annoyance. Depression that this vacuous and talentless blighter is getting the media attention he so richly covets and doesn’t deserve and annoyance that I've wasted minutes of my life watching the whole hideous spectacle. Normally I can just about stomach X Factor as just no-brain, half-entertaining drivel, but tonight I find myself vowing to never bother with it again.
Maybe it's all Laura Marling's fault!
Maybe it's all Laura Marling's fault!
Earlier in the day I went to Sheffield Cathedral to see Laura Marling (LM) on her Cathedral Tour. I've become an LM evangelist in recent months, with my ears seemingly permanently wrapped around her first three albums. Not since Radiohead released OK Computer or Gomez released their first album have I been so excited by an artist and their music. Being typically rubbish at being organised, I missed out on tickets to the evening gig, but I made sure I got tickets to the matinee acoustic show and had been really looking forwards to the gig since they had arrived.
The excitement in the church is palpable as we take our pew and wait for the show to start. Maybe I was looking the wrong way, but LM just seems to appear from the ether, angel-like and immediately breaks into "I Was Just a Card". I'm immediately struck by the voice, as clear and resonant as a tuning fork, and by her natural, unaffected good looks. Wearing skinny jeans, a big warm-looking roll neck and with blonde hair and pale skin, she sings with her head tilted back looking above the crowd. And what a voice, it's pitch perfect and fills the wide open spaces of the church, accompanied by delicate and intricate finger picking on acoustic guitar.
The songs are all beautifully delivered, not once does she over embellish, appear to strain or try too hard (a la X Factor). Highlights of the show for me are a more baritone version of "Rambling Man", the haunting "Night Terror" complete with two different types of whistling, "Night after Night" and the gorgeous and context-perfect "Goodbye England". In between songs, LM makes the occasional kooky observation about the cathedral before apologising and hastily launching into the next song. When she gets the words wrong for "Alas I Cannot Swim", that only serves to endear her to the audience even more.
And then as quickly as it had begun the whole mesmerising performance is over. The echoes of a resounding version of "Sophia" and the cheers of the captivated crowd bouncing around the austere surroundings as LM quickly exits the stage and disappears from view. My only regret is that we are not returning later for the evening show and that we'll be going home to X Factor. A more literal example of going from the sublime to the ridiculous, I'm struggling to think of.
I leave feeling much like the cognoscenti must have felt watching a young Bob Dylan in Greenwich Village . Then the collective marvelled at their prodigal son singing protest songs that so eloquently expressed their own feelings. Ok, so times have changed and Marling isn’t the "voice of a generation", but like Dylan was then, she is a towering and precocious talent capable of completely holding your attention as a solo acoustic performer and earning your devotion long after the last note has dissolved into the air. Just like Dylan, part of the excitement of seeing her is not just the joy of the here and now, but the potential for where all that talent will eventually take both her and us.
To paraphrase the great man himself; Laura Marling, she's a folk singer, humdinger.
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