eMusic Review 0
The second full-length from Alessi’s Ark confirms what her 2009 debut, Notes from the Treehouse, and her various EPs have indicated — that Alessi Laurent-Marke is a composer and performer who’s growing in startling leaps every day. Still only 20, she’s already a veteran performer, growing out of the MySpace generation to become a maverick satellite in London’s nu-folk scene (think Mumford and Sons, Laura Marling). There’s still a youthful innocence and freshness to her music, both in the gentle reflection of “Blanket,” yet she possess enough pop smarts to pen a piece like “Kind Of Man,” which is a little like Lily Allen without the snarky, über-hip attitude, or to putting in some sweet George Harrison/Badfinger-style slide guitar to glide out proceedings the end of “The Robot.”
But if there’s one song that acts as a real snapshot of the state of the Ark, it’s the aptly named “Must’ve Grown,” a reflection on moving from adolescence into adulthood set to the sound of a single electric guitar. Moving between the lyrical and the frantic, it’s only a short song, but very telling in the way she surveys the objects in her room that once seemed valuable but which… read more »
