Laura Marling: I Speak Because I Can
Laura Marling: I Speak Because I Can
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By inthenews. |  |
Monday, 22, Mar 2010 12:51
By Hollie Slade.
Virgin, out March 22nd.
What's it all about?
Marling was only 17 when she made her first album and her eagerly awaited follow up is more assured and less lyrically naïve than 2007's Mercury nominated Alas I Cannot Swim.
The reflective originality of Marling's songs has led critics to describe her as a young Joni Mitchell, an accolade that I Speak Because I Can's quiet and literary beauty altogether lives up to.
Who's it by?
Self-confessedly "painfully shy" folk singer from Hampshire, Laura Marling left school at 16 and went to London, where she started singing with Noah and the Whale and playing at the folk nights at Notting Hill Arts Club alongside Johnny Flynn, Mumford and Sons and others.
Her 2007 album received with heaped and at times fawning appraise, which it seemed Marling was not altogether ready for.
Two years later Marling has dyed her hair and started wearing make up. The album is a break from the shivery introspective brilliance of Alas I Cannot Swim, with its night terrors and doleful drums leading to a less taciturn and more forthright Laura Marling.
As an example.
"And I tried to be a girl that likes to be used/I'm too good for that/ There's a mind under this hat/ And I called them all and told them I've got to move." - Goodbye England
What the others say
"I still find it hard to imagine that this year will deliver an album I love more; in fact even at this early juncture I'd wager that it will be one of my favourite albums of the coming decade." - the Guardian
"Whereas so much music coming from the 'nu-folk' scene sounds like nature recollected in safety, by the glowing fire of some Olde Taverne, Marling's sounds starkly exposed to the English elements. I Speak Because I Can is my favourite release of the year so far - and certainly an album worth sailing home for." - the Telegraph
"The singer who two years ago said that Joni Mitchell's Court & Spark was her favourite album has just delivered an album that stands comparison to that high-water mark. And she's still only 20. We should be shouting her achievements from the rooftops." - the Times
"It's full of songs which twist and turn as you listen: titles laden with foreboding such as Darkness Descends and Devil's Spoke end up rolling along with jaunty gait, their brisk momentum stippled with cheery banjo-picking, while a title as apparently positive as Hope In The Air ponders questions like Why should death be scared of living?" - the Independent
So is it any good?
Not one to be drawn on the intrigue surrounding her split with Noah and the Whale front man and sometime producer Charlie Fink, who wrote The Last Days of Spring about the breakup, Marling has created an album which comes from the heart but is at the same time sideward looking, playful and observational.
The songs on I Speak Because I Can feel at the same time highly original and warm, homely and lived in.
Not only is it incredibly pretty, with Marling's sparkling unhurried voice tracing a storybook landscape of rivers, blackberries and red scarves across snowy English winters, but there is a stillness at the centre of I Speak Because I Can which gives the album a calm reflective character.
It is about a strength that comes not from avoiding pain but from weathering the storm, much in the same manner of the maids, World War widows and mythical characters that appear in the songs.
It's this exploration of femininity which gives the album a sense of originality and independence whilst keeping a sense of continuity with the past. Making a record about 'what it means to be a woman', which Marling explains is the thread running through I Speak Because I Can, allows her a voice which is both intimate and observational.
This makes for a strong earthy album full of little witticisms and wisdom which Marling's melodic incantations make you want to come back to again and again.
10/10