DELICATE ENGLISH FOLKTRESS

It’s nearly ten on a warm Friday in March and a rowdy crowd packs Austin’s narrow Ninety Proof Lounge. Finally, yet promptly, lithe 18-year-old Brit Laura Marling steps onto the stage, the front row close enough to read her watch. Already a known quantity in her homeland, Marling is poised to make her mark in the U.S. with her rich voice and delicate folk songs. She is not—nor does she desire to be—a flavor of the week. “I make music for the love of making music,” she says, later. “In England, my heroes sell 1,000 records.” Raised with a steady helping of Dylan, Marling got her first guitar when she was just five. (Neil Young’s “The Needle and the Damage Done” was, tellingly, the first song she mastered.) It was Bonnie “Prince” Billy’s I See a Darkness that inspired Marling to start writing her own songs as a teen. After local media buzz led to a Virgin contract, she released two EPs in 2007 and, eventually, her winsome debut, Alas I Cannot Swim, which hits our shores this August. Back in Austin, Marling attempts to finish her set. “I have one more,” she says. When a brawler in the back defiantly protests, Marling looks to her accompanist, nods, and without hesitation, answers back, to the delight of the audience: “Okay... two more.” www.lauramarling.com

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