Plain Sailing For Alessi's Ark

By Joe Kavanagh

Best known for his role as Mr. Roarke, the dapper, smooth-talking and mysterious oligarch on TV show, Fantasy Island, Ricardo Montalbán, once posited that there are five stages to an actor's career, which can be characterized as follows: 1: Who is Ricardo Montalbán? 2: Get me Ricardo Montalbán. 3: Get me a Ricardo Montalbán type. 4: Get me a young Ricardo Montalbán. 5: Who is Ricardo Montalbán?

For many years, the world of music was not so different to this hypothesis, as labels often sought to replenish their rosters with younger versions of past success stories or, on those rare occasions when a genuinely original talent was discovered, other labels would frantically search for their own version, and essentially follow Montalbán's blueprint until those success stories faded into unfashionable obscurity.

While this method still works well in the world of acting, it no longer enjoys the same success in the music industry, which, in addition to entering an epic state of flux in recent years, has also seen consumers adopt and abandon trends at an increasingly dizzying pace, thanks in large part to the vast array of music offered by the internet and a consumptive media.

Whereas trends like mod, punk and grunge counted their lifespan in years, with the exclusion of hip hop, more of today's crazes last only months, making the knack of finding an enduring act increasingly difficult.

The subject of this week's article is evidence of just such a phenomenon, as she is almost the complete antithesis of a trend that was all the rage only two years ago.

In 2006, Lily Allen exploded onto the international scene, where she was widely celebrated for her 'keeping-it-real' heavily-accented singing, gritty lyrics, and a cheeky personality that not so much courted controversy as embraced it as a pastime.

Record companies frantically searched for their own version of the most talked about newcomer in music and careers like that of Kate Nash, were tweaked to make her sound more like Allen. Fast forward to today and the prevailing view of Lily has changed considerably, as people tire of her seemingly offering an opinion on everything under the sun, deriding media intrusion even as she encouraged it when it suited her, and becoming almost a caricature of herself in the process.

What was alluring has become abrasive, and the endless delays in the release of her latest album do not bode well for her future.

It is a measure of just how quickly the times have changed that Alessi Larent-Marke is being marketed in some quarters as the 'anti-Lily Allen'; a budding star whose modesty and downright niceness are being packaged along with her undeniable skill at songwriting.

She currently stands at the front of a list of artists who are being touted as potential stars for 2009, and the prevailing view among anyone who knows her, or indeed has had any dealings with the amicable 18-year-old, is that it could not happen to a nicer person.

Born and raised in north London, Larent-Marke lists two seminal moments in her youth as being the prevailing factors in her choosing a career in music.

The first was her mother's decision to give her daughter Graham Nash's celebrated 1971 album, Songs For Beginners, as a present when she was still only a young girl.

Inspired by the Nash's breakup with Joni Mitchell and renowned for its taut song structures, the emotional album cast its spell on the young girl and engendered in her a profound love of music.

Although it did not inspire her to begin singing, she began to take more notice of music, absorbing different sounds that would eventually serve as influences later on.

The second event happened over 3,000 miles away when one of her father's friends began publishing a fanzine called, The Curse, while living in Brooklyn.

It was not until her 15th birthday that she began playing her sister's guitar, and put music to the words of one of her poems, which she then sung at school as part of her music exam.

The track, Glendora, not only proved to her and those around her that she could sing, but was enough to inspire her to forgo all her other interests in the pursuit of a career as a singer/songwriter, and, she later claimed: "all the things in my brain started to come together through music."

So inspired was she that she even made a deal with her parents, whereby they allowed her to leave school at 16-years-old, in order to spend the next year working on achieving a career in music.

If nothing concrete happened after one year then she agreed that she would return to school to finish her high school exams. She has yet to return.

With songs literally flowing out of her at an impressive clip, she decided to begin recording tracks in her bedroom and posted the result of her sessions up on her MySpace site.

Within weeks, she was receiving requests and compliments from people around the globe, and through available technology, she even began playing online performances for her modest group of fans.

She also began playing in London, taking up a residency in 12 Bar Club, but it was a performance at the Soho Club in December of 2006 that made her dream a reality.

In attendance that night, were representatives of EMI Records, who immediately expressed an interest after the show and eventually signed her to a multi-album deal the day before her 17th birthday.

Asked who she would like to work with, she immediately gave the name of American producer, Mike Mogis, who gained acclaim working with acts like Bright Eyes, Jenny Lewis and Rilo Kiley.

To her amazement, the label agreed with the choice and by last year, she was living in Omaha, Nebraska, spending each day working with Mogis and essentially using Bright Eyes band members as her own backing band on recordings.

Crucially, instead of seeking to restrain the unfettered nature of her songwriting, Mogis encouraged and even accentuated the attitude that saw her write songs without care for constraint, genre or preconceptions.

It led to some peculiar moments such as the time she recalls when she set out to make music "that sounded like how music sounds inside our bodies, so my friend and I recorded a cello part out of a bucket filled with water. We then sampled the heartbeat of his unborn baby daughter and his own breathing, by placing a tiny mic down his throat."

The first fruits of their quirky labors appeared on December 8, in the form of The Horse E.P., which was released under the name, Alessi's Ark, and staked a claim for one of the year's best releases just as the door was closing on 2008.

Held up as part of the so called nu-folk movement that is currently riding high with acts such as Noah And The Whale and Laura Marling, the EP serves as a potent opening shot in the career of an artist that will surely be around for a long time to come.

Incorporating elements of folk, psychedelic and roots rock, the tracks are made all the more remarkable for the fact that they came from the pen of a writer that only recently reached her 18th birthday.

Her breathy, husky voice calls to mind singers such as former Morcheeba vocalist, Skye Edwards or Mazzy Star's Hope Sandoval, and her exceptionally mature lyrics veer between bittersweet love songs and more escapist notions of faeries and fantasy.

Beautifully arranged, the songs incorporate many influences and if there was one criticism, it might be that they appear a little a little overly-polished at times, but overall, I would agree with one critic who described it as "the kind of music that would work equally well on a cold autumn night wrapped up in blankets around a warm camp fire or when staring out at the first mists of a spring day."

Her profile was only enhanced by the emergence of still more songs on her MySpace site.

With her debut album, Notes From The Tree House, expected to hit shelves in March, it appears that Alessi Laurent-Marke has the world at her feet.

In a year where it appears many people will be faced with hardship due to the ongoing global economic malaise, there is some satisfaction in knowing that nice guys, or girls, can still finish first.