London – Since her precocious arrival on the scene in 2008, each new album from Laura Marling is accompanied by a sense of anxiety. While no stranger to angst herself, the pressure seems greater on the listener. It runs deeper than simply, ‘will it be as good as the last one?’ You want her to have kept those musical signatures that weave such a glistening thread through her work and that poetic, self-seeking turn of phrase. You read somewhere that she’s taken up the electric guitar. Relax. The just-released Short Movie (on Ribbon Music in the U.S.) is as good as its forebears, at times scaling new heights and always beguiling. For an album recorded in London by an artist who moved to LA and took some time out from music before this return, the record has a distinctively American feel to it rather than English folk-rock. Though she’s now made the move back to London, the sense is that her U.S. experience has left an indelible mark on her work.
The 13-track, self-produced Short Movie escapes the conceptualised shackles of 2013’s Once I Was An Eagle, providing greater variety if not quite the drama of that album, but is further evidence of the growing independent spirit of Laura Marling. She might have ‘gone electric’ on this album but it’s not the Damascene conversion of a Dylan but rather a progression of her own style. It rarely takes her down a formal rock avenue, other than perhaps on the brooding “False Hope” and the self-help manual of “Gurdjieff’s Daughter.”
Elsewhere the evolved sound is a peculiarly austere one, evoking desert landscapes and lonely skies. The opening song, “Warrior,” sets the mark pitching a dreamy melody line into a wash of delayed guitar and stretched-out sound effects like distended cymbals, as the singer imagines herself as an anonymous horse casting off an undeserving rider. The songs see Marling taking her self-awareness journey through such characters, while sometimes adopting a more direct, autobiographical stance. In the opening line to “False Hope,” Marling asks “Is it still OK that I don’t know how to be alone?” yet she swaps doubt for a kind of frightened defiance as the song works through. Amid the electrics, that trademark thread I mentioned earlier still surfaces in the acoustic and string-driven “I Feel Your Love” or in the familiar sing-speak of “Strange.” By adding electric guitar, confidently finger-picked or strummed, into the mix Marling has enhanced rather than radically changed her core sound.
The strong title track takes its name from a saying (“It’s a short fucking movie, man”) that Marling picked up from an ageing hippy shaman she met in a diner, rather than under a Joshua tree. As an epithet for life or just a reminder that pain is transient, it sums up Laura Marling’s artistic mindset. It is worthwhile being a musician if you have the talent and opportunity to share your experiences at this level but there’s no productive need in getting hung up on failed relationships: “I’m paying for my mistake / That’s OK / I don’t mind a little pain.”
With this album, Marling has shed much of her earlier imprint, her demure Englishness, in favour of an earthier, more worldly-wise persona able to embrace isolation as a pathway towards finding herself and her role in life. Taking time out from music before Short Movie was cut led Marling to question the value of herself as a musician. Yet wherever her restless spirit will take her next, the certainty is that she has few contemporaries with greater substance or distinctive style.
Laura Marling will be touring England, Ireland and Europe this spring. Details are on her Facebook.
Tony Hardy
Tony’s great passion in life is music and nothing gives him more pleasure than unearthing good, original new music and championing independent musicians. His association with Best New Bands brings great opportunities for this. He also writes for Consequence of Sound and is a judge for Glastonbury Festival’s Emerging Talent Competition.
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