Tuesday 27/05/08 Liverpool Sound City @ Various Venues, Liverpool

Day one of the inaugural Sound City festival in Liverpool kicks off with a wide variety of acts playing across the cities venues- North By North West would be one way to describe it, however holding up against the daddy of multi- venue festivals seems premature at best.

Laura Marling at the Zanzibar has drawn a surprisingly boisterous crowd utterly at odds with her deliciously twee folk-pop ditties about love and loss. A large audience of girls on half term interrupt the between song banter regularly with calls of “We love you Laura” and banshee like screams. More annoying are the calls for individual songs. When a girl shouts for ‘My Manic & I’ Marling shows some annoyance by snapping back “We’ve got a set list thanks” before saying “This songs called ‘My Manic & I’” at which point the crowd erupts, secretly we half hope it’s a ‘psych’ but it’s not. Not a problem though as it, like all of Marling's material is a beautiful mix of ethereal heartbreak and wistful drama.

She takes the strange but brave decision to play three new songs in a seven or eight song set- given that the album ‘Alas I Cannot Swim’ is not even six months old this seems perhaps ill advised. The new songs though are evidence that the girl from Reading's talent shows no sign of waning. However everyone here has come to hear the tunes from the debut album that take a second to love and a lifetime to leave your heart. ‘Ghosts’ is a near perfect rendition whilst the barely there ‘Night Terror’ and ‘Tap At My Window’ show the porcelain delicacy of Marling’s voice to spine tingling perfection. What is most impressive about Laura Marling is how quiet her songs are, to be that quiet lays every guitar chord, vocal waiver and lyric completely naked and that takes some real guts.