Having established herself among peers like PJ, Liz, and Fiona, and matriarchs like Joni and Sandy with a tour-de-force (after all, every legendary career needs one, if not two or three or four) of an album that came in the form of 2013’s Once I Was an Eagle, Laura Marling is a songwriter at the height of her powers.
Indeed, her sheer skill as a songwriter is worthy as a definition for what the term should mean in the 21st Century – that of an orator of feeling and a seeker of meaning.
Both are something that Marling does inspiringly well and her latest outing, Short Movie, is no different.
On her new album, the remarkably young songsmith (Marling is just 24 years old) has given listeners a new set of emotions, a new, ever mature perspective, and the diary of a young woman seeking new meaning. “I realised that I hadn’t been in place for longer than two or three weeks since I was 16,” said Marling of her new LP.
“I thought I wonder what will happen if I try and root myself somewhere? Look back over the past eight years.” Short Movie, thus, is the result of a conscious attempt to change routine and reflect.
The result signals a new chapter in the sonic progression and artistic development of this talented young singer and songwriter, bearing a freer and looser sound than anything released previously.
While she doesn’t exactly outdo herself, Marling is inarguably doing herself on Short Movie. There’s no pretence here.
Of course, that’s not entirely true. Indeed, Marling’s music reminds one that singing and songwriting is more than catharsis, it’s also performance.
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When Marling sings laconic and slyly woven-together lines like, “I can’t be your horse anymore / You’re not the warrior I’ve been looking for“, she does so with a frozen nonchalance that leaves the listener thinking about the kind of person that would sing such a line in such a way.
Naturally, it lends the album title a certain cock-eyed wit, if one was to look into things that deep.
Short Movie may not be as sprawling and ultimately defining as Once I Was an Eagle, but it’s also far more focused than it’s predecessor.
Obviously, much will be made of the electric elements at play on Short Movie, but it’s not so much the presence of Marling Senior’s cherry-red Gibson 335 that adds a new dimension to Marling’s music, but the way she uses it as another conduit to her talent for expression.
Short Movie is out March 20th via Caroline Records
