Album Review: Alessi's Ark - Time Travel

From the moment you set eyes on Time Travel, the latest offering from grandly-named 20 year-old Alessi Laurent-Marke, you can't help feeling as though you've been teleported inside an old, picturesque English seaside holiday. As if the title itself weren't enough of an allusion, the sepia-tinted postcard shot of an ice-cream van that adorns the album's cover harks back to a simpler time – a mood the Londoner evokes to great effect across these twelve tracks.
 
Laurent-Marke's youth belies a prolific songwriting pedigree: by the time Notes from The Treehouse, her Mike Mogis-produced debut LP, landed a couple of years ago, she already had a trio of charmingly meandering, often Joanna Newsom-indebted EPs to her name. Now she and her folk troupe have returned with a first full-length for Bella Union, toting a slightly more straightforward sound, albeit one that's still high on softness and melody.
 
Opener ‘Kind of Man’ eases its way into your ears with laid-back acoustics and wistful vocals aplenty, conjuring memories of Feist in one of her slower, more contemplative moods.“I’m tired / Of walking this wire...” sings Alessi, with almost a slur to her voice, on second track (ahem) ‘Wire’; “It keeps me awake / For heaven’s sake.” Elsewhere, ‘On The Plain’ is a delightfully upbeat number that lifts spirits and could raise a smile and a nod on even the dreariest of English winter days.
 
Comparisons to 'first lady of English folk' Laura Marling are unfortunately inevitable: both artists are equally young and prolific, but while Time Travel 's twelve songs might not quite approach the maturity of Marling’s work – which exudes wisdom beyond its years and perhaps sets the bar unfairly high – that doesn’t stop them being plenty charming. The occasionally joyful mood of Beach House flits in and out of this record, as Alessi's concise, direct tunes subtly conjure a summer daze. This brevity of approach proves both a blessing and a curse: precious few of these songs venture beyond the three-minute mark – and when they do, not a second feels wasted or stretched; but this does mean it's all over in under half an hour, the disappointing silence following closer ‘The Bird Song’ catching the absorbed listener slightly off guard.
 
Still, better to leave us wanting more, and Time Travel provides a beautiful folk-inflected soundtrack to whiling away a sunny afternoon. Let’s hope there are plenty of those lying in store as the summer gets underway – and plenty of bright things lying ahead for Alessi's Ark.