Whatever we expected of Laura Marling after ‘A Creature I Don’t Know’, wherever we thought that jazzy folk jam sound of hers was heading, we were wrong.
Wonderfully, presumptuously, deaf-eared wrong.
Laura Marling doesn’t do linear progression. She doesn’t do predictable, and you’d be somewhat disappointed if you thought she did simple love songs.
It starts like a benevolent haunting; like a ghost who was there in the room with you all the time, but you only just noticed her. ‘Take The Night Off’ is a slow stride crescendo of a song, a soft whisper in your ear, fading in from nothing to shape itself by the light and the shadow.
This kicks off a four song suite worthy of folk pioneer Davy Graham, rich with Indian flavours and deconstructed raga scales. From the eloquent regret of ‘Once I Was An Eagle’, childhood’s end realised in ‘You Know’, all the way to the cathartic come-down ‘Breathe’, this is nothing less than a showcase. It’s a re-assertion of the Laura Marling myth; the girl who saved folk, the daughter of the Marling Baronet, the woman who emerged from the trappings of hype and expectation and Quaker schooling to be herself, who speaks because she can.
It’s only once we’ve done with this we can get down to the true substance of this record. ‘Master Hunter’ is a single cut if ever there was one, brought to life with a funky, rolling beat courtesy of Mr Ethan Johns, who also happens to be on production duties. It skews for the ‘I Am A Rock’ angle, rocking a catchy riff whilst its narrator tries her damnedest to convince us she’s impervious to love. Of course she’s fine. She’s cured her skin, now nothing gets in. That sounds healthy.
‘Little Love Caster’ sees Marling in her element, epitomising the kind of confidently mystical, powerful songwriting she’s come to represent. Ruth de Turberville’s bare, swooping cello lends the arrangement its rich, dark colours without swamping it in sentiment. Acoustic guitars play lyrical gypsy licks, winding us up as guttural percussion hammers and rattles and rails at the approaching hand of darkness that is ‘Devil’s Resting Place’.
Marling unleashes the elements of surprise and experience on us with these songs; they take turns breathing fire and soothing the restless spirit, and it still isn’t enough. She never overplays her hand, you see. A song is always over before you want it to be. So you listen again. And again. Sometimes even within the same song, such as with ‘Interlude’, which could almost be a Maya Deren film short soundtrack, looping and looming with surrealistic charm.
Sometimes it’s the words – the aching longing for something easier or bitter remembrances of hurt. Sometimes it’s the voice, that eerie Marlene Dietrich murmur that lends a cynical, world-weary slant on songs that are coming from a 23 year old woman. By any other standards than her own, these songs would sound conceited, even precocious. But they are her standards. And they are her songs. We can hear it in the music.
We don’t need to know the myth to understand Laura Marling. ‘Once I Was An Eagle’ is the wind howling at your window in the dead of night; it’s rejecting the lies you can’t make yourself believe. Laura Marling speaks the truth about herself. That’s heart-wrenchingly hard for any human being, never mind a songwriter.
Any old fool can write songs about what you really, really want – love, money, fame, wisdom.
It takes a courage like Laura Marling’s to write songs about who you really are.
