Laura Marling is simply too charming. Marling played the Columbia City Theater in Seattle’s Columbia City last week. The old Baroque-style theater housed a quiet night of female singer-songwriters who wooed a crowd who silently stood in awe of the talent on stage. As Marling approached the stage and immediately started commenting on the impossibility of entering gracefully by yourself; mid-sentence and mid-tuning she dropped her guitar, mucking it up slightly and causing her British cheeks to blush. In a fit of skilled recovery, Marling provided the crowd with enough self-deprecating banter while she sorted herself out as to keep us entertained and eager for her set to start.
After everything was all amended and Marling had duly mocked herself, the singer-songwriter entered into a very long and very new song. It might have been over fifteen minutes in length, but for its changing personalities and moods “When Brave Bird Saved” never deviated from holistic comprehension. For a new song that probably no one in the audience had heard before (a fact that Marling later apologized for), it brought enraptured glazes to the audience’s collective face.
Marling played a smattering of songs from her upcoming album, Once I Was an Eagle, and the more well-known ones from her repertoire. Looking forward, her new songs seem to bring out a blues in her that’s more inspired by the history of the genre than its emotive connotations. Her sound is deeper, though not darker. It’s more American country, without abandoning the quaint dialect of her British homeland.
Due to the slight mishap of the fall guitar at the beginning of the set, Marling was forced to sing some tunes in keys and octaves off from what she was accustomed to. Although the occasional low notes might have thrown her for a whirl, she didn’t have the pretention to hide it. She laughed at herself when she sounded a bit off kilter or off key, which was very refreshing and personable.
Shenandoah Davis, a Seattle resident who we caught at Barboza a few months back, opened for Marling and was very obviously a classically trained pianist. After a few songs, she was joined by her adoring husband whose vocals (even when he admittedly sang in unison, rather than the harmony party Davis had previously prescribed him) complemented her compositions and fairy voice expertly; the two were married in music as they were in love.
