ARRIVING in Glasgow on the very day that her latest album Semper Femina has been unveiled, there is a tangible buzz surrounding the O2 ABC before Laura Marling makes her appearance.
Having spent much of the week riding waves of critical acclaim, she arrives on a stage adorned with flowers and flanked by a five-piece band to rapturous applause before launching into ‘Soothing’, the opening track from her sixth full-length release. Dark, resolute and simmering with tension, it’s a fitting introduction to the gig with its jazz-fuelled basslines and tribal beats; her stunning vocal performance holding the previously restless audience to a reverential silence throughout.
While this may be a Friday night in Glasgow, Marling’s understated yet otherworldly presence holds your attention from the very outset. Intimidating without being superior, she gazes over the crowd as if to bring you into her world for one night only; delivering her complex lyrics in truly inimitable style with a stunning voice that alternates between ethereal, deeply soothing and a Joni Mitchell-like drawl. And while her material has become significantly more textured and experimental over the years, she remains the focal point throughout; even as earlier songs such as ‘Darkness Descends’ and ‘Rambling Man’ are given more resonant arrangements.
The majority of the set is taken up Semper Femina however with its nine new tracks on show. As one of her most powerful records to date, it is a beautifully intimate yet complex portrait of womanhood in the 21st century. Sketched through a deeply personal lens and built around the sharp lyrical observations that have informed her entire career, it’s an album that feels all the more significant in today’s world while representing a new way of writing about female identity; challenging ideas of power and archetypes in a way that isn’t polemic or sloganeering.
As an artist who has been infamously guarded over the years, it displays Marling in a more confident and self-assured light; and this is evident throughout the set on striking arrangements such as ‘Wild Fire’ and ‘Nothing Not Nearly’. Meanwhile, she revisits old songs from I Speak Because I Can with a greater sense of authority while holding herself with an air of graceful defiance; all the while ingratiating herself with the audience with brief and charming interactions throughout.
The real coup of the gig however is the chance to witness her intricate guitar-playing skills and unbelievable vocals up close. Having been left by the band for a solo section of the show, she performs ‘Nouel’, ‘Daisy’ and ‘Sophia’ with only her acoustic guitar as company; her fingers moving up and down the guitar with the kind of virtuosic freedom that is taken for granted on record. Her vocals meanwhile, so roundly praised by music fans and critics over the years, are quite simply astonishing to witness.
Laura Marling may not make the kind of music that you would immediately connote with a Friday night in Glasgow, but it is nonetheless a triumphant shows which re-affirms her status as one of the UK’s finest songwriters. Without the need for a frivolous encore, the show ends with an emphatic take on ‘Rambling Man’, leaving the audience safe in the knowledge that they have seen an artist at the very peak of her powers.
