Five years time; it's five years later

Having read a couple of articles about Noah and the Whale and Laura Marling recently, I've only just realised the connection between them, that Laura was not only on the Whale's first album, 'Peaceful, the world lays me down' (with the single Five Years' Time,  plus 2 Bodies 1 Heart and Shape of My heart),but was in a relationship with Charlie Fink, and that 'The First Days of Spring' which I have and love is all about their break-up.

Charlie Fink says that their latest album, 'The Heart of Nowhere' , released 6th May, was inspired by  a close friend getting engaged recently, and his realisation that it's a landmark moment when your first friend gets married. Hardly surprising coming from a young 26 year old, whose band is named after their collective favourite film 'The Squid and the Whale' (the story of a divorce seen from the perspective of two young boys) and its director Noah Baumbach.

The album includes a track 'Silver and Gold', which begins 'I was looking for Harvest but I found Silver and Gold', all about discovering Neil Young, who himself wrote 'Only love can break your heart' and 'Heart of Gold' - on the album 'Harvest'. Neil Young was an influence on the band and on Laura Marling.
Marling's first album, 'Alas I cannot Swim' released in 2008 when she was just 18, and nominated for a Mercury Music prize, was produced by Fink. After her relationship with him, she was linked with Marcus  Mumford of Mumford and Sons (he plays on some of her recordings) but they separated in 2010, the year she was again nominated for the Mercury prize, for her second album, 'I speak because I can'.

Now with the release of 'Once I was an eagle' she is quiet about any possible relationship, but has moved to Los Angeles where she says she has to do 'a lot less explaining about herself'; she claims to find Americans more poetic, London life hemmed her in. In 2012  she toured the West Coast  in the manner of Joni Mitchell in her early days, who she is often compared to, without a band or roadies, just herself and a hire car, calling it the Working Holiday tour. In America it's easier to be alone without being lonely, she maintains. (It was in Los Angeles in the 60's that Neil Young met Stephen Stills; in California  Stills and Graham Nash met David Crosby, who also introduced them to Joni Mitchell, and CSN and Y were formed).

So 2008 saw the release of Marling's debut album, Alas I cannot swim' and the re-release of 'Five Years' Time'. Here we are five years later, it took me a while to discover both acts, and I'm at last putting the pieces together.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8YCSJpF4g4