Whether it was huddling around the radio as Vera Lynn soothed the troubled minds of families across the UK during the Second World War, or witnessing the rebellious virtues of the mid-70’s punk movement that railed against perceived social disparity, the power of music to provide catharsis against an existential threat has rarely seemed more vital than in the midst of our current crisis.
There are few genres of music that capture the essence of human struggle and the intrinsic desire to escape from said drudgery quite as expertly as folk music, which is why Laura Marling’s decision to release her seventh LP ahead of schedule, and thereby eschewing any notion of personal interest, appears to have been impeccably timed.
After shrewdly navigating the trials and tribulations of what it means to be a woman in the modern age on 2017’s predecessor Semper Femina, Marling returns pretty much as she left off, at least thematically. There is a conscious focus on her vocals and lyrical content as opposed to any distracted complexity of percussion and instrumental arrangements this time around, with a fictional overarching tale of a mother earnestly addressing their daughter using the benefit of a lifetime of hindsight, making for a compelling listen throughout.
Opener Alexandra immediately places the imaginary, although no doubt relatable, protagonist centre-stage. Marling invokes a palpable curiosity as she repeatedly harmonizes, ‘Where did Alexandra go?’, before spritely acoustic strumming underpins her now customarily sharp-witted gender role observations. Held Down was the first glimpse the world had of Marling’s latest work, and with astute use of an all-female choir in full effect once more they linger on the agonising desperation in Marling’s lyrics. Depicting the helplessness felt in a relationship where all too much has gone unsaid, the evolving inflection in vocals between American mid-western drawl in the verse to the piercing chorus cries of not wanting to get ‘lost in the crowd’ make for a captivating, although altogether heart-breaking listen.
A fleeting visit from the percussion section announces Strange Girl, making way for a track leaning heavily on Marling’s undoubted influence of the sixties folk-rock movement. Where they once spoke of resilience against the likes of an unjustifiable Vietnam War, Marling refocuses such sentiments onto a galloping acoustic plea to the ‘strange’, ‘lonely’, ‘angry’ young woman attempting to rise above a world seemingly against her.
From teachings on recovering from a broken heart on the delicately brooding Only The Strong, complete with the gloriously assured rhyming couplet, ‘Love is a sickness cured by time, Bruises all end up benign’, Marling goes from strength-to-strength at the midway point with Blow by Blow. Swapping the guitar for the piano on what is an undeniably sweeping slice of pop-ballad-based mastery, the track deals candidly with the pressures of a relationship breakdown being played out in the public glare, including having to ‘underplay distress’ before highlighting a further life lesson of the importance of learning from such mistakes.
The title-track demonstrates parental anxiety for female offspring in its bluntest form, with a deliberately fragile instrumental setting the platform for chastening observations on the damaging effects of toxic masculinity on the lives of young women, most pertinently put in the line, ‘There’s blood on the floor, maybe now you’ll believe her for sure’. The End of the Affair sees Marling reunited with Semper Femina producer Blake Mills for a co-written track that sees Marling’s vocals undulate in range throughout, as if echoing the imbalance of power between man and woman as she details an illicit romance coming to an end under a veil of false promises and feigned remorse.
Just before the album’s release, Marling remarked on social media that Song For Our Daughter is, ‘An album stripped of everything that modernity and ownership does to it, is essentially a piece of me, and I’d like for you to have it’, and as the endearing old-world simplicity of For You brings yet another self-assured rumination on the human condition to a close, we couldn’t be any more grateful for her consistent brilliance in this time of uncertainty.
