LAURA MARLING - INTERVIEWS AND REVIEWS

17 December 2012
Katie Wilkinson of Freedom Spark describes Marling's Christmas session at Shoreditch House in East London on 16 December. She says Marling performed a new song (and tells us nothing about it other than its length), and also that: "After exiting the stage, for perhaps the first time ever she does an encore as she 'had nowhere else to go' and would have had to cross the stage to exit it anyway."

"...on the crowd favorite, 'Rambling Man', the familiar lyrics spilled from the audience unbidden, resulting in an impromptu choir that blended quietly with Marling's lead. Sometimes sing-alongs aren't that welcome, but this one was kind of nice."

It was as if [Marling's] hands never stopped working their way up the fret board, as she traversed from one song to the next. She played several live favorites that will eventually find a home on her 4th album, including "Once," "Love Be Brave," and "I Am A Master Hunter"; ...after bemoaning the loss of her reputation in Portland following a visit to a strip club, she did a cover of Simon & Garfunkel’s "Kathy’s Song" that made all the grown men cry. Not really, but it should have.

5 October 2012
Katie Carroll (the blogger not the singer) interviewed Marling last October for MXDWN. Marling said this to Carroll about the new album:

"We've done a lot with resonance. I like low resonance; I think that's interesting, when you can barely hear a tone underneath a tone. And also because there's a lot to do with characters in this new album, we've kind of assigned a sound to each character that reappears throughout the album whenever they're relevant."

" Marling seems to have a compulsive desire to mix things up. At times her guitar playing verged on Led Zeppelin-style rock, while her lyrical twists owe a clear debt to Dylan’s folk storytelling. Opening with a couple of new tracks, she spellbound the audience nonetheless with both her technical skills and her poetic penmanship."

"After a couple of songs, Laura Marling paused to retune her guitar. The cathedral sat patiently in the quiet darkness as she worked. Suddenly aware of what must have seemed to her to be a gigantic awkward silence, she said quietly into the microphone, 'Stage banter isn't really my strong point.' We all laughed at her generous self-deprecation, but beneath the sweetness there was a sharpness. We were being told by Laura in the most disarmingly charming way that we had to take what she was offering, and that we shouldn't expect any comforting small-talk from her any time soon. This is part of the duality that defines Laura Marling, an innocence and a cold reality that to me just seems so quintessentially English. I'm not complaining, however. In that dress, with that voice, with those legs, I could sit and watch her tune a guitar all night."

"...a hint of peach blush complemented her alabaster complexion. She wore a touch of mascara on her lashes, dark red polish on her nails, and shimmery light pink lipstick covered her sweetheart lips. Her porcelain skin and platinum hair were accentuated by her all-black ensemble. A black leather jacket covered her knee-length black dress and black stockings. Oversized rings adorned her guitar-picking fingers and a dangling bracelet hung from her wrist."

"I would probably really enjoy Scarlett Johansson playing me, but likely it would be Dakota Fanning. When I'm in America people stop me in the street and tell me I look like her."

30 May 2012
Marling told Alyssa Pereira of spin.com that she will do her next album without a band to "keep it really simple". She also discussed her preoccupation with death, saying in part:

"The other day I was looking through some old sketchbooks of mine and I found something about the myth of Undine. She was a water goddess or water nymph and she was supposed to make people feel like there was no danger in the world and lull them into a sense of security. And she causes people to walk into the water. I've been thinking about that a lot over the last couple months. UNDINE will probably pop up somewhere [on the new album]. "

"Timber Timbre are usually a band. They're not exactly perky, but they usually add some pleasant touches. But tonight they are instead represented by one guy with a Satanist's chin beard, who brings out their dark, dark heart. He sits and slowly strums a blues guitar that drips menacingly with reverb. His voice chills whilst his music is echoing, deep, and terrifying; imagine the mood on a submarine where the power has gone and the only other person on board is singing murder ballads about you."

24 February 2012
The Australian magazine COUP DE MAIN ran a short interview with Marling by Sarah Mudgway. Mudgway asked what was her favourite lyric from ACIDK. Marling's response? "My favourite from my own lyrics? I couldn't possibly say, I'd feel too exposed." Marling also revealed that the song I Was Just A Card was written while she was in Texas.

"When I was at school, I always thought that when we were doing English and learning poetry or dissecting a novel, it was terribly unfair that there was one way of taking it in and one way of understanding it, and there was a set curriculum of how you would take on this poem or how you would take on this novel. I just don't think any writer has that much control over how words affect people. Words will affect people differently, and I like that people would have their own ideas about things like that."

"Marling has a deep fascination with objects. Opening with 'Goodbye England (Covered In Snow)' from I Speak Because I Can, the song was as much an ode to everyday objects as it was to the city and the lover who have vanished. Jackets, coats, scarves, and books are all equally important characters, inseparable from the wounded humans who walk the snow-covered streets of London alone."

"Alone on stage for a handful of songs, Marling dispensed charming banter, playfully cursing and false starting. Her voice, an amalgam of Ani DiFranco, Dolores O'Riordan and dustbowl America, benefited from the sparse setup. The Leonard Cohen-indebted 'Night After Night,' with its dry delivery and quiet plucking, was a particular highlight. Rejoined by her band, the gig kicked into high gear, soaring for a towering take on 'Sophia' -- the Robertson Davies shout-out didn't hurt -- and climaxing with stomp-along hoedown, 'All My Rage'."

"Marling's fascination with John Steinbeck's third wife, Elaine, gave rise to 'Salinas'. The refrain 'I am from Salinas, where the women go forever' echoes the stoicism of a heroic woman watching a great man die. The record's title comes from British Biographer Jehanne Wake's novel Sisters of Fortune and, supported by the almost brutal cover art, helps cement the idea of the beast as a metaphor for complex, unnatural or unspoken desire."

"It's the one I still can't believe I wrote. It's quite unsettling; it was quite unsettling to record, and quite unsettling to play to people, and it's quite unsettling to listen to, I think. Sound-wise it's just a punch in the face, and the imagery is way darker than I intended it to be."

15 July 2011
Emily Mackay reviewed Marling's album A CREATURE I DON'T KNOWW for NME. Here's what she said about cut number 5 (THE BEAST):

"...odd shifty-rhythmed strums build into something darker and darker, heavier and intenser until we could almost be in PJ Harvey's '4 Track Demos'. 'Calling Sophia goddess of power,' invokes Marling, 'Instead I got The Beast and tonight he lies with me'.

And about the final cut ALL MY RAGE:

"A bone-rattling strum with a death-shanty feel. 'I tip my cap to the raging sea / Cover me up I'm pale as night / With a mind so dark and skin so white / Is this the devil having fun / I tip my cap to the raging sun'. It seems to be a sort of nature sacrifice hymn concerning the loss of a child."

"It's not been about awards but how Laura can come back and advance her talents as a songwriter. It's an important record which sets her apart from her peers; she is markedly different and sits in her own space. And it's not a significant shift between albums stylistically but there are seismic, chameleon shifts as an artist which show Laura is stepping up as a brilliant storyteller."

"This album was definitely written with the knowledge that it would be recorded with a band, the same band I've been playing with for the last year, In some ways the set-up of the band dictated the sound. I bought a POG Pedal and borrowed an electric guitar the week before we hit the studio. We very nearly put the whole album through the POG."

"I've written this EP, this collection of quite simplistic songs and I'm about to decide whether I'm going to do them in a grungy style or, I'm particularly fond of funk at the moment, so there's a massive fork in the road and I don't know which one I'm more comfortable (with)."

"After a couple songs she thanked everyone for their appearance; 'Glad you are here...appreciate that a lot', and with that sentence the ice was broken. After that, one could really feel how more comfortable she was with every new song she played. In the bookstore atmosphere, the songs seemed to be in an environment where they fit in naturally, as did the singer. In between songs she showed off her new guitar skills, playing the Love Theme from Cinema Paradiso."

In December 2009, Mumford & Sons and Laura Marling embarked on a cultural exchange with traditional Rajasthani musicians Dharohar Project, involving some unlikely collaborations and gigs together in Delhi. The return leg of this intriguing exchange is the subject of this eight-track live EP, recorded at a gig at Camden's Roundhouse as part of the iTunes Festival in July, 2010. Given two solo songs each, the recordings colourfully culminate in a mass jam session of colliding cultures, rhythms and harmonies.

Laura Marling played only 2 songs. I am not sure how comfortable she was at the performance (it was all Canadians other than her, maybe??) She sounded great for those 2 songs, but there was 16 songs total from 4 artists and she only had her 2. She was cheered on to play more and it looked like she was going to and then Casey from Ohbijou had to finally let her off the hook and say that "she was taking a pass". I think there was some disappointed fans (myself included) as she basically didn’t say a word really or play music past 15 minutes in (due to the rotation she played the 1st and 5th song out of the 16).

24 July 2010
Anne T. Donahue wrote about the Hillside Festival in Guelph, Ontario (and Marlling's performance there) for The Aux TV Guide to New Music.

Before we knew it, Beardyman's set came to a close, and between his end and Laura Marling's beginning, we had enough time to head to the Aboriginal Circle for the Sacred Fire Opening Ceremony. For those that may not know, if there's anything that sets Hillside apart from music festivals all over the world, it's its obvious Aboriginal influence and respect for its culture and its teachings. The Fire burns from Friday night until Sunday's closing ceremonies, and is watched on rotation by a number of people throughout the weekend. The best part is that anyone is free to enter the circle at any time, so if you want to take a moment to reflect or meditate by the fire, it's not only welcome, it's encouraged.

7 June 2010
Liz Pelly interviewed Marling for Paste Magazine

"At age 16, Laura Marling dropped out of school, moved from her family's home in the English countryside to the big city of London, and recorded Alas, I Cannot Swim, her stunning debut album. This spring, her second LP, I Speak Because I Can, was released by Astralwerks; though she's still only 20 years old, the new album features some of her most complex and deeply contemplative lyrical poetry to date, underpinned by shadowy folk instrumentation supplied by Mumford & Sons (her occasional backing band) and Marling's own richly finger-picked guitar. In May, before her show at First Church in Cambridge, Mass., Marling talked with Paste about touring, her first years in London and her recent drunken encounter with Neil Young."

1 June 2010
Erica Grossman blogged about the Denver show for Denverpost.com

25 May 2010
THE RUCKUS, a Denver entertainment blog, published some great pictures of the performance at the Larimer Lounge by Tiffiny.

14 May 2010
Spinner.com reviewed the performance in Brooklyn on 13 May. Heres a quote:

"Midway through British songstress Laura Marling's headlining gig in Brooklyn, N.Y.'s Music Hall of Williamsburg, her backing band vacated the stage, leaving just her alone -- and free to tell stories. When introducing a new song -- she never gave the title, but often said the line "bed of my bones" -- she mentioned that she'd recently played it in Los Angeles. She asked the West Coast audience if it would be good for a film and relayed that 90 percent of the crowd agreed that it would be -- if used for Twilight."

6 May 2010
Aaron Jentzen of Pittsburgh City Paper wrote about Marling on 6 May, quoting Marling this way:

"I don't think [my youth] is a good thing to be known for -- it's not good to be known for anything other than being good at what you do, and I can feel a little bit patronized. But in England, I've been drinking since I was 16, and doing it responsibly. And then when I go to America, I feel incredibly patronized when someone says I can't drink."

28 April 2010
Her show at the Palladium was reviewed by clashmusic.

"Standing nymph-like and precious in front of bland and slightly kitsch (and not in a good way) stage decorations, she was still that unassuming, modest Marling we all love but evidently more confident and comfortable in her own skin."

25 April 2010
Angus MacDonald of the Cambridge Tab reviewed the performance at the Corn Exchange, saying in part:

"Ms. Marling's gentle blushing nervousness was matched by a genuinely humbled audience. It was a brilliantly balanced act. She played the beginning and end of the gig with the support of a band, but the core of it by herself, with only a spotlight to accompany her (Angelic connotations did not go unnoticed). This allowed her to really fill the space with her sound and include instruments like cello and jazz organ, but at the same time create an intimate atmosphere."

8 April 2010
Laura Marling came out against the criminalisation of illegal music downloaders in an interview with the NME, saying:   "I don't think people should be criminalised for getting music for free because it's there, it's offered to them," she said. "It's promised to them by the internet server people, it's promised to them by the phone companies. I think it's their responsibility."

30 March 2010
ISBIC has also been reviewed by Alan McGee in the Guardian, and by Sam Richards of NME.

25 March 2010
Ludovic Hunter-Tilney of the FINANCIAL TIMES reviewed the performance at Camden Barfly.

She is, you suspect, far too decorous to respond with a "Positively 4th Street" - style kiss-off. But her new album I Speak Because I Can puts clear water between her and her contemporaries. Launched at the Barfly, a hot, dark cage of a room symbolic of the fetid indie dives she'll soon be exiting for good, it showed itself to be an impressively ambitious, intelligent work.

21 March 2010
Aidan Smith interviewed Marling for scotsman.com. Paddy Hanton reviewed her 10 April performance at The Academy in Dublin for glasswerk.ie.

20 March 2010
The Observer published a review of I SPEAK BECAUSE I CAN by Kitty Empire (the music critic, not the German band or the kittycam site). She seems to have liked it.

6 March 2010
The Guardian's Sarah Boden interviewed Marling for the Culture section.

""I'm almost an entirely different person to the one I was when I wrote the first album," says Laura Marling, smoking prodigiously on the patio of a King's Cross pub. Then, the singer-songwriter was a pale-faced, chronically shy 17-year-old keen on grungy T-shirts, mulishly determined not to be gussied up for popular consumption. Her 2008 Mercury-nominated debut, Alas, I Cannot Swim, saw her pushed, blinking, into the full-beam of acclaim. Marling was heralded as a precocious young talent, and her striking lyricism and graceful delivery gave rise to flattering Joni Mitchell comparisons.

2 March 2010
Marling made the cover of FLY MAGAZINE. Below is a quote from the FLY article.

"Hello my name's Laura... and I'm here to entertain you." Having just finished an exhilaratingly intense rendition of new single "Devil's Spoke", Laura Marling stands unassumingly in the middle of the stage at New York's Poisson Rouge, introducing herself like the reluctant ringleader, sending a sold-out crowd into hysterics with her politely-deadpan delivery. Her dry humour, discomfited banter and quintessentially English awkwardness might be in contrast with the self-assured inhabitants of the Big Apple, but there's an incandescent charm and understated star quality to the 20-year-old that makes her utterly engaging wherever she is...

10 February 2010
Melody Lau reviewed a 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."

2 February 2010
Bobbysix.com reviewed the Speigeltent performance in more detail.

"I bloody love Australia," Laura Marling told the sold-out crowd at the start of her three nights in Hyde Park, before going on to say what a pleasure it also was to play in such a lovely venue. Indeed, The Spiegeltent was the perfect setting for such a performer, and the English songwriter created a suitably intimate ambiance with her intelligent folk and charming stage presence.

31 January 2010
The Sydney Morning Herald ran a review of the performance at the Speigeltent.

On a not-as-hot-as-it-has-been January night this week, the Laura Marling we saw with a band adding keyboards, cello, bass and electric guitar was all that and more. Now she spins stories between songs and jokes about spiders and hunky friends, invites audience banter and plays a long solo bracket.

2009

3 November 2009
In a REVIEW of the London show 2 November at Union Chapel, Greg Rose said:

Despite being able to sell out the Bloomsbury Ballroom, and most other venues, herself, Marling is testing new material on this tour. After satisfying those familiar with her tunes, she plays solo versions of 'Ghosts' and 'My Manic and I', which are politely received.It is the new tracks that soar though, country-tinged 'Mama How Far I've Come' and the cutting 'No Hope In The Air' performed with freshness and vigour. Dressed in 50s fare in preparation for a hen party later, her five-song cameo is filled with vigour and new-found finesse.

26 October 2009
Marling's performance at Club Passim in Cambridge, MA, was described by The Stu Reid Experience, saying in part:

"Weakness, thy name is man. I was wooed on Thursday night by a songstress named Laura Marling. You may know her as a former member of the illustrious Noah and the Whale, or as the charming woman who recorded a folk duet cover of Eminem's BRAIN DAMAGE. I now know her as my ultimate indie crush, a tiny English woman with the voice of a siren."

2008

4 July 2008
Interview with NPR:

3 February 2008
In an interview with Jude Rogers of The Guardian, described her songs as "optimistic realism" and says she was inspired by American musicians Nina Nastasia and Diane Cluck. She also says that the song 'Tap at my Window' was inspired by a poem by Phillip Larkin, and that the 'turning point' for her songwriting came in her early teens when she heard the album 'I See a Darkness' by Bonnie Prince Billy.

31 Jaunary 2008
Gareth May reviewed the MY MANIC AND I EP for The Independent. Here's a quote from the review:

Perhaps the best achievement on this EP, the prelude to an album released on 11 February, is the third track, 'My Manic and I'. Given its evocative lyrics of the gods, lovesickness and beautiful death, you'd be forgiven for thinking you'd stumbled across a translation of Puccini. This, married to the metronomic piano, the haunting backing vocals and, of course, Marling's ever-present internal rhymes, softly sung yet undercut with harsh tragedy, tell the listener they're in a theatrical dreamland that they can only leave when the song ends.

2007

2 October 2007
NME reported that Laura Marling was barred from her own gig at the Soho Revenue Bar in London on 1 October for being too young. Instead, Marling busked outside the venue before finding another place to play - The Exchange in Gerrard Street - later on in the night.

24 June 2007
NME described Marling's performance at Glastonbury briefly, saying this in part:

During the singer songwriter's performance on the Park Stage, a man got up on stage and started dancing along to the music before being bundled off by security. Otherwise, Marling thrilled the early fans, playing a solo acoustic set for the first three songs, which included 'Failure' and the Ryan Adams-referencing 'New Romantic'. She was then joined onstage by her-four piece band which included a fiddle, banjo and accordion player.