Alessi's Ark at Paper Dress Vintage

Alessi's Ark

Sam Ashton

Paper Dress Vintage, 25 October 2017

"I've finally got a new album out," Alessi Laurent-Marke tells us tonight, with a beaming smile. "I took my sweet time, didn't I?" She isn't wrong: it's been four whole years since her last album, The Still Life, came out. During that time she left her record label, briefly dropped the Ark from her name and then reconsidered and got back on the Ark. She's also recorded her fourth album, Love Is The Currency, self-releasing it on her own label (Zooey Records - like her very first EP), which is what tonight's show at this very unique venue is celebrating.

Paper Dress Vintage is actually a vintage clothing shop, with an amusing Halloween-themed display in the window. It has a cafe in the shop and upstairs acts as a music venue at night. It's a small room with a tiny bar and a small stage that just about fits a drum kit and some guitars and amps. When we walk in a talented guitarist called Sam Ashton is crammed sitting in-between all the equipment, playing atmospheric instrumentals on his guitar that sound like moody soundtracks to films. I only catch a few of his songs but it was great to watch him play guitar.

Alessi arrives through the crowd looking a lot more grown-up than the sweetly awkward 18-year-old I first discovered all those years ago. She's wearing a cool tea length dress that's kind of like a long Western shirt. It looks like something a 50s country star would wear and I immediately love it because of that.

Tonight, despite the tiny stage, she has a full band which includes her longtime guitarist/keyboardist Dan Hoyes, a cool-looking bassist with long greying dreads and looks more like he should be in a reggae band who I'm sure she said was called King something, and finally a bearded drummer who I can't see for most of the gig hidden behind an amp and his kit. 

They begin with atmospheric new song Portal ("I'm told sound is a portal to the immortal underground") complete with a spoken word intro. In the intervening years Alessi has obviously been stretching her wings musically, breaking out from quirky folk songs that we know and love her for. She continues with DLD, which is bright and poppy and full of life, while Love Travels again has more of a slow groove with more sultry vocals and soaring keyboards. This is definitely a new, more mature Alessi.

The next song she tells us is a love letter to Hammersmith Bridge and the Thames, River, which once again dreamily veers into electropop, but Wives, a tale of fishermen and absent spouses, is more like the folk tales that the Alessi of old was so adept at. 

The rest of the gig showcases the new album and Alessi's new sound, with most of her back catalogue forgotten aside from a few fitting numbers from the previous record which flirted with a more electronic sound (The Rain, Sans Balance, Tin Smithing). There's just one song where she returns to her pure folk past, when she plays Woman, from her first album Songs From The Treehouse, alone. I really like Alessi's new songs but I have to admit Woman was by far the highlight of the night for me. There is something so special when she sings alone with just her guitar: her voice is so delicate that sometimes a full band slightly overwhelms her.

Alessi herself seems far more confident than I remember but it's to be expected: she now has years of gigs behind her and has now traveled the world, played with some amazing artists and has four albums under her belt. 

I have so many fond memories of the young awkward Alessi but the new more sophisticated Alessi is still wonderful and hearing these new songs tonight, I'm certain her new album is not only worth the long wait (if there was any justice in the world the beyond catchy Cut The Cord would be a massive hit) but will be one of my favourites of the year.