TRACK REVIEW: Laura Marling - For You

TRACK REVIEW:

Laura Marling

For You

9.8/10

The track, For You, is available from:

https://open.spotify.com/track/4439aAX3jNkNKx1ygUr9WC?si=ju8PPrRgQxWA-Xi3lFtG1Q

The album, Song for Our Daughter, is available here:

https://store.lauramarling.com/

RELEASE DATE:

10th April, 2020

GENRES:

Folk/Nu-Folk

ORIGIN:

London, U.K.

PRODUCERS:

Laura Marling, Ethan Johns and Dom Monks

LABELS:

Partisan/Chrysalis

__________

THERE is a lot to cover off…

PHOTO CREDIT: Hollie Fernando

in this review, and I know I am late to the party in terms of assessing Laura Marling’s latest album. Look around, and Song for Our Daughter is scooping huge reviews across the board! That is no surprise when you look back at Marling’s career and see how her other albums have fared. I do wonder whether you will ever put a foot wrong as, since the start of her career, she has released stunning album after stunning album! It is strange to think she is only thirty, yet Marling has released some of the most beautiful and intelligent music we have seen for decades. I am not going to review her entire album but, in addition to selecting a song from the record, I want to cover Marling from several different angles. I cannot think of another artist in musical history – not a solo artist anyway – who has had such a strong and near-faultless start to their career. Maybe it is the fact that Marling’s sonic palette is quite calming and simple. ‘Simple’ might not be the right word, but she seems to have concocted a pleasing and easy-going blend that makes it impossible to dislike. Marling’s voice is incredibly strong, and she can switch accents and tones from song to song. Her lyrics, I feel, are the strong suit. I will allude to this more later, but Marling’s music transcends mere songwriting. Her words are so immersive and engrossing; she has the genius of a classic poet, but she is very much relatable and rooted in the modern times. On her latest album, the narrative seems more personal. Having just turned thirty, Marling is thinking more about the next stage of her life. Song for Our Daughter alludes to a hypothetical child that Marling is thinking about; having a child (children) and what she would say to her. I guess it is natural to have these questions and yearnings when you get to a certain point in life.

PHOTO CREDIT: Dave J. Hogan/Getty Images

Marling’s albums are a real feast for the heart and imagination, and her new album is no exception. I wonder whether the current lockdown has intensified Marling’s feelings and thoughts regarding family. Marling has said how she wants to arm the next generation with her lyrics. Rather than write about her own feelings and passions, Marling wants to educate and lay down something important for those growing up right now. That is admirable and, through Song for Our Daughter, one is constantly illuminated and moved. I will talk about how Marling’s life has changed over the past few years, but I think Song for Our Daughter is her most confident and memorable album to date. Marling spoke with the BBC about how she has changed her writing approach and label; and how this has brought something new to her life:

“Marling, who turned 30 earlier this year, has never felt the need for a running away fund of her own.

"I am my escape route," she says.

Which is why, at the end of Semper Femina, she wasn't walking away from anyone or anything; but setting off to find a new approach to music.

The songs she came up with after that last album seemed too familiar, "like a writer who'll write the same book over and over again," she says. "I think I was in danger of being bored of myself."

So she left her record label and her management, collaborated with the theatre director Robert Icke, wrote original music for Peaky Blinders and formed a duo called Lump with fellow musician Mike Lindsay from Tunng.

Working on Icke's play Mary Stuart changed her approach to lyrics. "The way he directs and the way he writes and rewrites plays, are very much based around rhythm, so I've been thinking a lot about the rhythm of language," she says.

Lindsay, on the other hand, introduced a new spontaneity to her music. With Lump, a lot of the vocals are recorded in one take, "and I can hear myself stumbling over lyrics because they were written 30 seconds before".

But Song For Our Daughter is wholly Marling's album. Her preoccupations - the complexities of desire, archetypes of womanhood, art, romance and wanderlust - are threaded through the songs, but there's a newfound economy to her melodies and lyrics.

"That was definitely on my mind: How you reduce everything down to its essential parts together to get the sentiment across," she says.

"And I don't think that's my necessarily my forte. My forte, I think, is ambiguity, which is definitely still on there, but on some of the songs there's just a very straightforward sentiment".

Nobody was expecting an album so soon from Marling. Song for Our Daughter was slated for a summer release, so to have the release date moved to 10th April was a big surprise. I remember reading the NME article below and salivating at the possibility of a new Laura Marling album:

“Presented with the assumption that her new album will be coming out this year, Marling responded: “I’m assuming too!”

“It’s finished as far as I’m concerned,” she continued, before diving into the feelings behind the upcoming LP. “I was thinking a lot about how I would arm the next generation in a way that I haven’t been armed. That’s the heavier side of it.

“But I was also thinking about trying to not write the same song that I’ve written over and over again for the last ten years. That’s a good one to avoid.”

She continued: “I’ve kept an inward gaze, but I’ve gone horizontally downwards to another generation. I turned 30 two weeks ago, so I’m feeling in a different position in my life, and whether there is a responsibility to be a certain way or to consider things about the next generation, which there certainly is”.

That is an interesting subject that is more relevant now than ever: artists who are shifting the release of their albums. Dua Lipa brought out Future Nostalgia this month and moved the release date forward a week. She wanted fans to have it out earlier and, unfortunately, I think the album was leaked ahead of time. Most artists are putting back their album release date, as they want to combine it with touring and getting out and promoting. There are whispers that Charli XCX is working on an album from lockdown, and artists are putting out material still. Although we have fewer new albums out, I think it is important that releases do not dry up. People are listening to a lot of music now, so it is admirable Marling has moved her album up. I do feel like there is this new opportunity for creativity; artists have time on their hands to record a lot more. Granted, things are very strange, but I feel we will see a lot of great albums emerge over the next couple of months. Marling is an artist with a big reputation and fanbase, so she could well have sat aside and left the album until August. Massive respect to her for giving people a real treat when we really need it.

One will forgive the rather non-linear and random approach in this review, but there are a lot of interesting things to discuss regarding Marling. Weirdly (or not), Sir Paul McCartney is someone who springs to mind. One can hear influences of Macca throughout Song for Our Daughter, and there is some of that McCartney melody that weaves through her tracks. When she spoke with the BBC, she discussed McCartney’s influence:

"I had a fight with a friend of mine, weirdly, defending Lennon against McCartney," she says. "And I took it so personally.

"For some reason I felt like Paul McCartney was the good one and Lennon was the bad one and I was somehow embodying the bad one - so I thought it'd be interesting to see why I felt that strongly about it."

After falling down a YouTube wormhole, Marling "had a full awakening" after hearing McCartney's 2005 song, Jenny Wren, a companion piece to Blackbird, whose lyrics depict a female musician's struggle to hold on to her talent amid poverty, societal oppression and heartbreak.

"I always knew he was a great songwriter but when someone played me that song, I couldn't believe it," she says.

It's likely that McCartney's lyrics resonated with Marling, who has consistently challenged the narrow categorisation of female musicians. She never casts herself as simply the femme fatale or the lover scorned; the heroine or the victim; the mystic or the guardian angel. Instead, she throws herself into the murky complexities of real life. As she puts it on one new song: "I love you my strange girl, my lonely girl, my angry girl, my brave..."

I am going to go off on a McCartney tangent, but it is interesting hearing how he has affected Marling’s latest album. I am not suggesting his music has affected Song for Our Daughter profoundly, but it is great hearing some of Macca’s D.N.A. run through the album. This is just a little aside, but I thought it would be interesting to mention it.

PHOTO CREDIT: Justin Tyler Close

As Marling is thirty, I am minded looking back at the last few years and see how her life and music has changed. Marling is now based in London, but she has lived in L.A. and faced some personal uproot. Every movement and chapter of her life has affected her music, and I feel the fact Marling has experienced a lot of change through the years has all gone into Song for Our Daughter. Now, Marling seems more rooted and forward-looking, but there are still those questions relating to family and children. I want to bring in an interview from The Guardian from 2017, when she was promoting her last album, Semper Femina. This passage goes to show how Marling’s life was rocked prior to the album – and how it has changed since 2017:

“A few years ago, Laura Marling got lost. Living in Los Angeles – where she’d moved as an independence-seeking 21-year-old – she took a hiatus from the music-making that had earned her three Top 10 albums and stacks of songwriter-of-her-generation style plaudits, and reinvented herself as a yoga instructor. Not being particularly well known in the US, this career change left her wholly incognito. “I had no identity. It was really, really, really difficult,” she says. “I was socially bankrupt.”

Not only was she stripped of her status, but a bout of depression had left her bereft in other ways. It was a “very null time”, she says. “I didn’t feel like I had a gender in a weird way – I’d lost a lot of weight so I didn’t really have any feminine features.” She shaved her head and “looked like a young boy. It was quite a good experience of being a non-sexual presence in the world, like a eunuch.” The cherry on top of this cake of devastating self-negation? She wasn’t even very good at teaching yoga. “You need to know a lot more than I know to do it well,” she admits.

Today, Marling’s former identity as songwriter-of-her-generation is fully restored; the 27-year-old is back doing what she does better than almost anyone else. Her new album of folk-inflected rock is her most direct and accessible in years. Fuelled by gorgeous vocals, hypnotic fingerpicking and singalong melodies, Semper Femina is what one might categorise as “classic” singer-songwriter fare in the lineage of Neil Young, James Taylor and Joni Mitchell”.

I will look at a few other topics, but I am going to bring in an extract from that BBC for one last time soon. Marling has always faced sexism and judgement as a woman in music. Her podcast series, Reversal of the Muse, is one I would recommend people investigate; where Marling brings together a selection of women in the industry who talk about their experiences. Marling started her career as a teenager, and she collaborated with Noah and the Whale before releasing her first solo album. Now, she is held in high esteem, but one suspects Marling is being passed over and overlooked because she is a woman – every woman in the industry faces more struggle and discrimination than their male counterparts. Maybe Marling felt uncomfortable speaking out against sexism when she was young, but she has hope that the generation coming through and going to call out issues like gender inequality and prejudice. Is Marling such a strong songwriter because she had to fight? Is that spark and genius a result of fighting back against misperception? Maybe it is not completely responsible for her talent, but it is a factor. Marling talked with the BBC about the Nu-Folk scene when she was a teen:

“Recently, the songwriter looked back at her emergence in London's nu-folk scene at the age of 16 - at how men would advise her to "lose the guitar" and become a traditional frontwoman, or how early press coverage defined her in terms of her relationships with Marcus Mumford and Charlie Fink from Noah and the Whale.

She came to realise and realised that "innocence being taken away prematurely" had been a major theme of her life, which is why the songs on her new album are intended "arm the next generation in a way that I haven't been armed".

"I thought, 'If my daughter went through any of the stuff that I went through, I would find that so emotionally difficult to to comprehend'.

"And that's not to say that my parents didn't do their very best to try and produce someone who was capable of looking after themselves in the world, but the culture didn't. The culture didn't provide that."

It's striking that her previous album, which dissected the male gaze and celebrated the strength of female relationships, emerged just before the #MeToo movement took hold”.

I want to discuss a few more things before I come to review Laura Marling’s track, For You – the closing number on Song for Our Daughter. Whilst we are in isolation, there are options regarding entertainment and a musical fix. So many artists are streaming gigs and they are adapting to this rather strange situation. Marling, rather than delivering gigs, is providing online guitar tutorials. This is something that is quite special. I feel it is all well and good watching artists play, but there are so many people in isolation who would love to learn to play songs on the guitar, who might not be able to afford tuition. Go to Marling’s Twitter page – the link is at the bottom of this review -, and you can get involved. One might expect Marling to retreat about and remain quiet, but she has been reaching out and interacting with fans. Even if you are not a musician, it is nice watching these videos and getting to connect with Laura Marling in a way you would not otherwise of being able to. With her new album out, I wonder whether she will be teaching people any of the songs from it. I applaud Marling in general, because releasing an album when there is so much drama and anxiety…that is quite a gamble. Marling has a level of popularity that means an album from her is always going to be discussed and heard, but one wonders how Song for Our Daughter would have been received if it came out a few months from now. I think the album is just what we need right now. There is hope and comfort among the more personal and emotional tones. The album is a rich and rewarding listen, yet there is something different about it. Differing in sound to her previous work, I think Marling has created a real treasure. I should get down to assessing my favourite track from Song for Our Daughter: For You.

PHOTO CREDIT: Hollie Fernando

I chose For You to highlight, as I think it is among the most beautiful songs Marling has ever written. Crooning, low backing vocals beckon the song forward. It is an unexpected opening, and it is almost like a song from the 1950s. It is hard to explain, but there is something reminiscent of the romance of that time. Gently strumming, Marling’s beautiful voice nicely balances with the backing vocals. “I took pictures of you/long before I met you/Just a fragment of my mind” is a wonderful image. One is not too sure whether Marling had been dreaming about this person before she met them, or whether this is more of a dream scenario. Marling’s words always provoke speculation and intrigue, and I love the way she delivers the lines. With the backing vocals cooing and swaying almost like the trickle of a stream, Marling remains focused. I have mentioned how her accent can change, and she can switch from a lower vocal to quite a high-pitched delivery. Here, her vocal is quite deep, and there is little of the Mid West accent that we have heard on previous albums. “I hit cold air for you/almost every night/Precious things are hard to find” gets one guessing regarding story and imagery. I get the sense that Marling has been waiting for this person; maybe there was this void in her life. She has been walking around and searching for some sense of meaning and connection. Marling reveals how it was “just one evening” – “Much like any else” – when she finally found this person. There is this persistently dreamy quality to the song that makes you sad a music video might not arrive – as I can imagine something very beautiful and memorable (maybe there will be an animated video if For You is released as a single). Marling has been picturing this passion and revelation for a while so, when reality finally happens, she saw this person there “As I had seen you all my life”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Andy Witchger

Given the album is about Marling thinking about parenthood and putting down songs to an as-yet-born daughter, this song feels less like a romantic bond and more a message from a potential mother to a hypothetical daughter. Marling has been imagining, perhaps, what her daughter would be like and how they would interact. Marling talks about a picture that she wears; a keepsake and trinket that she holds dear. Marling’s voice double-tracks as the song progresses and one falls under the spell of this phenomenal songwriter. “Now that I have you/I will not forget/What a miracle you are” suggests birth and this much-cherished arrival. Although Marling does not explicitly mention a child, I feel it is a final stage of this concept: the arrival of a child after a lot of searching and wondering. Marling reveals how love is not an answer but the “line that marks the start”. With every breath and line, I started to form these images and little scenes: Marling at home with this new child, perhaps. That said, she sings of thanking God that she has never loved, never wanted or met. So, with those words coming back a few times, it seems like motherhood might still be in her mind but not realised quite yet. There is this mixture of heartbreak, romance and dreaming as Marling is imagining a life that could be. Perhaps the perils and uncertainty of romance is too steep and stark right now. There is this speculation and longing for a daughter, but perhaps the songwriter is not quite in a place where she can commit; scared that love might run away or that things could go wrong. I have listened to For You several times and, each time, I get new impressions and scenes. It is a marvellous song that ends one of Marling’s finest creations. So many artists deteriorate or lose their magic as they release more albums, but Marling seems to grow stronger and more amazing as time goes by. She has entered a new decade of life, and her perspectives have altered. I look forward to see where this staggering songwriter will head next.

PHOTO CREDIT: Andy Willsher

This is the part of the review where I usually look at what is next for that artist. For the next couple of months, it is going to be a case of saying very little. Marling did have gigs booked for this month, but that has all been affected. Look at her official website for update, but you will be able to catch Laura Marling later in the year. It is a shame artists release albums now and then they do not know when they can play them live. Whilst we wait to see when the live music scene will kick back up, Marling will be keeping busy with her guitar tutorials and keeping amused. I am sure she will be writing more songs and keeping in touch with fans. Although so many people have reviewed her album already, I wanted to pop in a review for For You and talk about in more general terms – as she is one of my absolute favourite artists ever. I shall wrap things up but do go and buy Song for Our Daughter is you can – the link it is at the top of this review. At only thirty, Marling has already established herself as one of the finest songwriters of this generation. Maybe she will not quite reach the same peaks as Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell, but she will get pretty close! She still has so many albums in her, and it is scary to think just how far she can go! As we are in the house and relying on new forms of distraction at this tough time, music is a necessary balm and source of guidance. If you are looking for an album to love and keep you company, then I would recommend Laura Marling’s Song for Our Daughter. Truly, it is yet…