Album Review: Laura Marling - Song For Our Daughter

Three years after her album Semper Femina, and signed to a different record label, Laura Marling has said that her new album is essentially a piece of herself, an ode to her past, present and future.

Released months ahead of schedule, Marling’s seventh studio album, Song For Our Daughter, is a triumph. It is considered a conceptual album by Marling who has described it as a chance for us to hear the ‘experience of trauma and an enduring quest to understand what it is to be a woman in this society. As ever, this poetic explanation is what we have been accustomed to over the years from the singer. But the 30-year-old songwriter reveals more of her aged wisdom and experience in this album through her clarity in storytelling, than we have ever heard before.

As ever, this poetic explanation is what we have been accustomed to over the years from the singer

Marling has established a cult following since her humble beginnings, something she has openly attempted to escape. In 2017, she threatened to ditch music altogether and become a yoga instructor, claiming she had ‘no identity’ and was ‘socially bankrupt.’ Looking to distance herself from the idea of being Laura Marling, she embarked on side projects like LUMP, and enrolled in a master’s degree for psychoanalysis. But luckily, she has returned, with a rather different sound than the folky narratives we have come to expect from her.

The first track on the album ‘Alexandra’ is a response, says Marling, to Leonard Cohen’s ‘Leaving Alexandra’ which recounts one of Cohen’s lovers leaving him. ‘There’s no mention of her interior life,’ in Cohen’s song, Marling suggests. ‘There’s no suggestion that she has an interior life that’s anything more than [being] alluring. And that’s interesting to me as an autonomous young songwriter who has an interior life, and who has been projected on and survived, what can be quite an overwhelming passionate experience. So, I wanted to give Alexandra a voice of her own, or to find out what happened to Alexandra and the consequences of surviving that relationship.’ This outlook on womanhood is expressed by Marling as she sings: ‘I won’t write a woman with a man on my mind.’ her independence shining through, before mockingly coming back with ‘hope that doesn’t sound too unkind.’

The idea of running away returns in Marling’s eighth track on the album, ‘Fortune’. Marling is recounting how her Mother had a ‘running away fund’ which was never used, while she was growing up, just incase she ever needed to escape. Picture-perfect appearances, she seems to say, can hide a wealth of sorrow deeper than we can imagine. The burden of sadness and regret is passed on from Mother to Daughter, and so is the “unbearable pain”. But Marling told the BBC that she is her ‘own escape route’ – the perfect way to sum up her new approach to music and the musician she has become. Which perhaps is why, at the end of Semper Femina, she didn’t seem to be walking away from anyone or anything; but setting off to find a new approach to music.

She didn’t seem to be walking away from anyone or anything; but setting off to find a new approach to music

As ever, there’s something very raw about what Marling is telling us through this album. ‘Only the strong survive / only the wrong relive their lives / love is a sickness cured by time’ sings Marling. As opposed to the cryptic lyrics we are used to from Marling, these appear more refined and clearer. In fact, it seems in many ways to be the least cryptic of Marling’s work. I have adored every album she has released but that’s not to say I’ve understood all of them. Thinking back to some of her very early EPs from 2007 and 2008 like Typical, My Manic and I and New Romantic, which are, as Marling has confessed herself, very much a stream of consciousness, naïve and confused, yet real and important to her at that time. They were fast paced, a splurge of lyrics, no less poetic and beautiful, but often without as much as a pause between verse and chorus. She has always seemed wise beyond her years, but I think it is in this album, which seems so complete and rather more self-assured, where she has really found her voice.

The gentle humming at the beginning of ‘For You’, seems reminiscent of Joni Mitchell or Leonard Cohen and their self-reflective qualities. It’s this self-reflective nature that pulses throughout Song For Our Daughter, through its hypnotic melodies simple but not flimsy, gentle yet still intoxicating.

The album just feels effortless. This entire album serves a testament to how amazing Marling’s skills as a songwriter are. So many of these songs are so simple: a verse will be Marling’s vocals over a repeating guitar line, and yet it sounds polished and complex. The delivery is probably the least folky we have ever heard Marling, at least in the traditional sense. But the storytelling is as folk-inspired as ever. Much less percussive, Marling appears to be placing much more importance on the words and their poetry, at points very much softly speaking the words as opposed to singing them. There is something so comforting about this and her crystalline voice is hypnotic. The harmonies are just beautiful, and the stripped back recording process reminds us that Laura Marling is a truly talented singer.

Marling demoed the whole album herself; some of the vocal takes are the first ones that she recorded, many of them in her North London flat. To be recording in this way is very uncommon these days, there really are not many artists who are able to do it. At the beginning of ‘The End of the Affair,’ we even hear Marling as what can only be imagined as the arrangement of her seating and getting comfortable with the placement of her guitar. This sort of spontaneity shows how much Marling has grown as an artist, and the intimacy she has been able to create with her listeners.

This sort of spontaneity shows how much Marling has grown as an artist, and the intimacy she has been able to create with her listeners

The penultimate track ‘Hope We Meet Again’ is my favourite on the album, it seems most like some of her earlier ‘I Speak Because I Can’ (2010) and ‘Once I was an Eagle’ (2013) tracks from years ago. ‘I’ve lived my life in fits and spurts / maybe I’ve had more than I deserve’ Marling sings at the beginning of the song, in a strangely nostalgic tone, as though she is at peace with the heartbreak she has suffered. Talking of the fading away of past lovers, Marling reminisces the past with a dreamlike melody and hauntingly beautiful lyrics. ‘Hope we meet again / hope you never change’ are the final words of the song and leave us with an air of hope and a sense of ‘no hard feelings’ amidst the common bitterness of heartbreak. This is surprisingly new for Marling, who has favoured bitter resentment over a hopeful farewell in past albums, especially when talking about love.

‘Lately I’ve been thinking about our daughter growing old,’ she sings on the title track, ‘all of the bulls*** that she might be told.’ This non-existent daughter, perhaps one she wants to have, or one she is too scared to raise in a world of ‘bulls***’ and “sickening love”, is everyone one of us listening, anyone who has ever loved and lost and who is still to love and lose. Marling concludes with no grand revelations, but instead marks a steady course through a life that’s still somehow worth living. A warning to be wary, we could say; an imparting of wisdom from a girl who has become a woman.

Simply put, Song For Our Daughter is a beautiful album. Its gentle nature cannot hide the fact that Marling is a master songwriter, producing songs that walk a fine line between the simple and the complex, while still never losing that pure tone that permeates the album.

This is one of the most beautiful albums I have heard in a long time, I cannot recommend it enough.