“I don’t know how much of my music you know,” Laura Marling said to an attentive audience at City Winery on Friday night, “which is why I think I’m getting away with new songs and covers.” Perhaps she was surprised by the enthusiastic response, a round of applause in which the audience tried to demonstrate their love for her work. She gave a small smile, as if taken aback, and then raised her hand to around shoulder level, index and pinky fingers extended – the most restrained rock hand gesture ever.
It was just one moment in an hour long concert, but it encapsulated everything that makes Marling endearing. She is unassuming, she is quirky, she is charming, and she is capable of making some of the most emotional music since the likes of Nick Drake. It’s the rare type of captivating performer that can elicit complete silence while performing and then be met by uproarious applause upon concluding. Such was the atmosphere on Friday, where she treated an attentive audience to a mix of old favorites and new gems. It was part concert, part episode of VH1 Storytellers, and it was all beautiful.
I’ll put it out there: Laura Marling has one of the most gorgeous voices I’ve ever heard. Sitting in my seat waiting for her to take the stage, I gave myself shivers by just thinking about how good she had been the last time I saw her perform. This time, it was the same thing all over again. If you walked past her on the street or saw a photo of her performing, you wouldn’t think twice about it – she doesn’t look someone who should be able to hold a cavernous room spellbound. But when she demurely takes the stage and begins to sing, that is exactly what happens. Her voice, full of textured caramel tones and rounded edges, is usually understated. She lets the notes and words do the work for her, without worrying too much about imparting constructed emotion into the songs she sings. As a result, everything seems honest, legitimate, profound. And when she does open the pipes up to full throttle – as she did on the chorus of opener “Devil’s Spoke” – it’s truly magnificent.
In addition to a phenomenal voice, Marling has an ear for a good song. Friday night’s set - half with a backing band and half solo - drew heavily from her latest album, I Speak Because I Can. Outside of those tunes she also played old favorites like “Ghosts” and “Night Terrors,” and a handful of covers and new songs, making for an enchanting set. Spicing up the set even further were Marling’s cheeky quips and comments. Faced with monitor troubles and forced to pause her set after five songs, she started listing off facts for the audience – “I know loads of facts about ants,” she said, “I’m a nature program enthusiast.” Her charm was complete; so endearing is Laura Marling that a story about a fungus growing from the corpse of an ant was met with laughs and applause.
Introducing Neil Young’s “The Needle And The Damage Done,” Marling said, “This is a song I used to play at a lot of my early gigs. My mother didn’t know it was a cover, and she told a lot of people I wrote it.” Marling paused briefly to adjust her guitar before adding dryly, “She didn’t know it was about heroin.” Later, when covering a song by little-known English songwriter Jackson C. Frank, she spoke of his alcoholism saying, “He became an alcoholic, as all the best of them do.” Ghosts, it would seem, is more than a song title for Marling; she’s well aware of the tenuous balance of the emotional songwriter.
And a balanced emotional songwriter is exactly what Marling is. She has the ability to easily communicate intense longing, brooding sadness, gentle grace. Her passion is evident in her songs, even though she can at times seem a bit disaffected on stage. After speaking about sticking out like a sore thumb in America, she played a bleak and gorgeous rendition of “Goodbye England (Covered In Snow).” When she finished the song, an American friend turned to me and summed up my own feelings: “Now I miss England.”
Introducing the closing couplet of her show, Marling shared her general feelings on encores. “I don’t really understand encores,” she said, “so I don’t do them. Instead, I like to do it this way: If you wanted me to play an encore, this is my last song. If you didn’t want me to play an encore, then this is my second to last song.” She closed the show beautifully with the title tracks from her two full length albums, “Alas I Cannot Swim” and “I Speak Because I Can.” After listening to the first, I cannot imagine not wanting the second as well.
Setlist:
Devil’s Spoke
No Hope In The Air
Rambling Man
Ghosts
Blackberry Stone
New Song (“Here Lies A Man”)
The Needle And The Damage Done (Neil Young Cover)
Night Terror
New Song (“Done With The World”)
Blues Run The Game (Jackson C. Frank Cover)
Goodbye England
What He Wrote
Alas I Cannot Swim
I Sing Because I Can
