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Ruth De Turberville started playing the cello and singing at a young age in the various orchestras and choirs of her home county of Berkshire, UK. She is classically trained.
Ruth's intelligent approach to music has been captured in numerous live and studio recordings with the Cambridge band "The Winter Kings", and Laura Marling, with whom she regularly performs.
Marling will be in Australia from
31 July to 8 August. Opening for her in Australia will be
Boy & Bear and
Johnny Flynn. After that she will perform at
PUKKELPOP in Belgium 20 August, the
LOWLANDS FESTIVAL 21 August, and
ELECTRIC PICNIC in Ireland 3-5 September.
Concerts Page has ticket links.
A new EP containing 4 tracks worth of collaborative recordings between Mumford & Sons, Laura and traditional Rajasthani folk collective Dharohar Project is available on iTunes UK. The tracks are:
1. Devil's Spoke / Sneh Ko Marg
2. To Darkness / Kripa
3. Anmol Rishtey
4. Mehendi Rachi
Previews are available on Marling's YouTube Channel.
"Court and Spark was the first album I owned that I listened to over and over. Its actually quite easy listening, the lyrics are simple but striking and the craftsmanship of the entire album is really special. She bridges a few gaps between genres she later went into with more depth, so it's the one I always come back to, but it's closely followed by Blue and Hejira.
"I remember my father playing me Same Situation when I was a nipper, and saying how nobody since has done melodies as well as Joni Mitchell. I concur. The thing that most affected me was just her resonance, and that is something she must have been born with."
----- Laura Marling
The Special Edition CD which includes a 45 minute behind the scenes documentary, with footage from the "Laura Marling & Friends" show at the Royal Festival Hall in London last summer, plus a 16 page lyrics booklet, can be ordered from AMAZON UK, The Standard Edition of the album can be ordered there as well.
Lily Allen tweeted about I SPEAK BECAUSE I CAN: "It is an incredible album, please go and buy it."
The Observer has a review of the album by Kitty Empire (the music critic, not the German band or the kittycam site). She seems to have liked it. I SPEAK BECAUSE I CAN has also been reviewed by Alan McGee in the Guardian, and by Sam Richards of NME. Ludovic Hunter-Tilney of the FINANCIAL TIMES reviewed Marling's performance at Camden Barfly.
"Laura" is of course derived from the Latin Masculine name Laurus (meaning laurel). It is a popular name because of two people. The first is St. Laura, who was a 9th century Spanish woman who became a nun after the death of her husband. The Moors, after invading and occupying Grenada, tossed her into a cauldron of molten lead. This was fatal but it raises another question: was molten lead so cheap and readily available to the invading Moors that they used it as an execution device? Did they bring it along, or did they use local lead? The second Laura of note is the woman addressed in the poetry of Petrarch. Her actual identity has not been conclusively established. He met her in 1327 in Avignon and she died of plague in 1348.
"Marling" is literally a clay line. In nautical terms, a "small stuff of two fiber strands, sometimes tarred, laid up left-handed, or a finer kind of spun yarn". Although she does like to spin yarns, the more likely derivation of the name is from Merlin which in turn means a small bold falcon, Falco columbarius, of the Northern Hemisphere. All of these references can be traced back no farther than the last half of the 14th century.
The most Marlings in the United States are in New Mexico, Texas, and Ohio.
Born 1 February, 1990, Laura Beatrice Marling was raised in Eversley, a small town in Hampshire (population 829). Marling now lives in London. She has two sisters, one of them named Georgina (7 years older). Her dog, Skippy, died in 2008 at the age of 13. (Somewhere between living in Eversley and London, she lived in Reading, Berkshire.) Charles Dickens and Jane Austen were also from Hampshire, on the south coast of England. Her father, who was an amateur singer-songwriter, began teaching her the guitar when she was 3, and when she was 13 she wrote her first songs, inspired by The Libertines. Her father then insisted she listen to some good music, and played her lots of Joni Mitchell and Neil Young. She plays the bass and piano as well, and owns (and possibly can play) a dulcimer.
Here are some photos from Eversley courtesy of Eversley Online Gallery
Previously a member of Noah and the Whale, a good folky band that sounds a little bit Jamaican (they have a new album which is a bit of a downer and not at all Jamaican), Marling has also recorded with The Rakes and the Mystery Jets.
For a description of Marling's performance at Club Passim in Cambridge, MA, go to The Stu Reid Experience. Then read a REVIEW by Greg Rose of the London show 2 November at Union Chapel. and a review of the 7 November concert by THE HIGHLAND NEWS.
The Guardian's Sarah Boden interviewed Marling for their Culture section. Marling also made the cover of FLY MAGAZINE this month. She was also featured in the London Sunday Times' Art & Entertainment section. Liz Pelly interviewed Marling for Paste Magazine.Melody Lau reviewed the Toronto concert, saying in part: "Just past 10PM (yes, this was quite the early show; it is a school night after all), British folk princess Laura Marling took the stage. Playing mostly off her new album I Speak Because I Can, Marling played a set split between performing with a full band, again with double bass in tow and Roe back on stage again on keys, and performing solo." The Sydney Morning Herald ran a review of Marling's performance at the Speigeltent on 25 January. And Bobbysix.com reviewed the Speigeltent performance in more detail.
Aaron Jentzen of Pittsburgh City Paper wrote about Marling on 6 May. Her show at the Palladium was reviewed by clashmusic. Spinner.com has reviewed Marling's performance in Brooklyn on 13 May.
Angus MacDonald of the Cambridge Tab reviewed the performance at the Corn Exchange, and Aidan Smith interviewed Marling for scotsman.com. Paddy Hanton reviewed her 10 April performance at The Academy in Dublin for glasswerk.ie.
Marling did some of the vocals for track five of The Rakes CD "Ten New Messages". Interestingly enough, she is listed in the album notes as "Laura Marlin" without the ending g. This cannot yet be downloaded in the US. The import CD is available from Amazon.
With the Mystery Jets she recorded "Young Love" which was released as the second track on their CD "Twenty-One". The song has also been released as a single. The B side of the single is "Flakes" which is track four on the aforementioned CD but the version on the single has ben recorded on a dictaphone. This may not have been a good idea.
"Alas I Cannot Swim", "I Speak Because I Can" and other Laura Marling recordings can be downloaded from iTunes. TWENTY-ONE, by the Mystery Jets, is also available for download from iTunes.
