Laura Marling – Ghosts

The Song

• Ghosts is off Laura Marling’s first album ‘Alas I Cannot Swim’

• The album was produced by Charlie fink, the lead vocalist of her previous band Noah and the Whale. It was released on February 4th 2009.

• The song is about lost love and the effects loosing a loved one can have on a person.

• Ghosts is a concept video, with a very small hint of performance as you see the singers and band’s heads, at first floating in darkness in the style of queen – bohemian rhapsody, then on top of floating creatures and performing stick figures, as if they were all one being.

• The video has a weird, infantile setting to it. The simple illustrations and and bright colors are similar to that of a children's book or tv program before technology became so advanced. The child like style of video contrasts with the very adult lyrics of the song; Marling talks of lost love and matters that a young person could not understand.However the video does have a darker element, for although they are depicted in a childlike way the images themselves are quite sinister, for example the fact that the band all have their faces painted to look like skulls links into the idea of ghosts and dead people.The skulls are also of the same design used in Mexico to celebrate the day of the dead, and also used in a lot of Mexican folk art. This links to the album cover for ‘alas I cannot swim’, which is a painting also in a very similar style to that of Mexican folk art, something that is common in the folk/folk rock genre.

• The images in the video often relate to the lyrics, sometimes directly and sometimes not as obviously. For example the camera slowly tilts downwards to the image of a funeral as Marling sings ‘Stood at the table where she sat and removed his hat, in respect of her presence’ something you would do at a funeral.

• “opened up his little heart”

• “Ghosts”