Gary Flockhart: Lottery of Laura Marling tickets

Until, that is, I found out how the tickets were being allocated.

Sadly, the opportunity to buy briefs for the show at the Caves on February 4 were only made available via a lottery system, with fans invited to register for tickets and then a lucky few being picked at random.

If you weren’t one of the lucky ones – sucks, I know – then, like me, you’ll be hoping Marling comes this way again later in the year while promoting her forthcoming album.

Her fifth long-player, Short Movie, is the follow-up to 2013’s ridiculously good Once I Was An Eagle and is released on March 23.

It is one of the most eagerly-anticipated albums of 2015, and sees the Brit Award-winner pushing into new territory with the heavier inclusion of electric guitar.

Critics’ darling. Marling debuted four unheard tracks from Short Movie during a low-key gig in Los Angeles last month, and the praise from the music press was as gushing as ever.

Marling has said the album was inspired by her time living in America and her feelings of being “desperately lost in translation”.

“America induces this fear in me,” said the singer, who has been living in LA for the last two years. “It’s so vast and so complicated.

“I feel like I’m here as a weird voyeur, watching it in a really strange way to make sense of it.

“You feel dwarfed by the country, which I don’t think I felt in England. So quite a lot of the record is about that.”

“My idea was to have a metallic, urban sound. Living where I’ve been living, there’s always a f****** helicopter, there’s always the sound of a city behind you. So I wanted to have that weird background disturbance all the way through the record.”