A strangely prophetic yet comforting album for our times. Review for The Arts Desk

Dropped a month into the yr’s first lockdown, Laura Marling’s seventh album landed like a soothing tonic to an odd and chaotic time. The stripped again manufacturing had an air of loneliness, but the vocals have been effervescent and soothing. The profoundly insightful lyrics of Songs For Our Daughter and Marling’s assured solitude was like a foreboding of how 2020 was to unfold.

The daughter to which the title of the album speaks, is made up and it’s the aspect of storytelling which makes the album so dreamy. It lifts you out of actuality and permits for escapism into the folky rasp and narratives harking back to Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan – a robust mixture, notably when offered within the incandescent type of Marling, armed with out a lot aside from a guitar.

The vary of feminine characters she sings of are intriguing and complicated. There’s “Alexandra” (a nod to Cohen’s “Alexandra Leaving” within the higher register), the girl with no worry who lived out within the woods and who finds diamonds within the drain and who we take part questioning “I have to know, the place did Alexandra go?”. The mild wistfulness of “Track For Our Daughter” may very well be a cautionary story spoken to any girl wherever to maintain your guard and up and never give in as “Innocence gone however it’s not forgot, You may get your means via it one way or the other”.

“Held Down” has been my repeat obsession for this yr. The lyrics “And I simply meant to inform you, That I do not wish to allow you to down, And I simply meant to inform you, That I do not wish to get you incorrect” resonate with the vibrational frequency of uncertainty that has made this yr so wonky regardless of our greatest efforts to maintain every thing hanging collectively.

Whereas the withdrawls from festivals this summer time was intense, Marling tailored shortly to the digital conveyance of musical experiences. The imaginative and prescient of her standing alone in entrance the metallic skeleton of the Pyramid Stage at Worthy Farm on The BBC’s Glastonbury Expertise was certainly one of my most hauntingly lovely reminiscences of 2020. Her phrases “Keep low, hold courageous, I really like you, my unusual lady, My lonely lady, My indignant lady, My courageous lady” turned tattoo’d on my coronary heart in that second and has been rolling round my skull ever since.

Much less folky than earlier than, there are elegant and smart ballads right here, with a young power that conjures the voice of Karen Carpenter, notably within the intimate and heart-breaking “Blow By Blow” during which she prophetically sings “Nobody was ready, However all of us carried out, Like we would performed all of it earlier than” or her painfully wistful goodbye, in “The Finish of the Affair”.

“Hope We Meet Once more” aches with an clever poetry that I want I’d written – “Dwelling, this isn’t a house anymore, You simply threw your items, they washed up on my shore, I’ve not lived some other means, It’s my proper to wander, I would select to remain”. It’s these oddly uplifting messages that talk with familiarity and a smart accuracy to the truths that we should keep in mind to carry on to, whether or not reflecting on 2020 or waiting for the long run.

Two Extra Important Albums of 2020
Waxahatchee: Saint Cloud
Haim: Girls in Music Pt. III

Musical Expertise of the Yr
Chris @christineandthequeens Instagram lives that simply appeared, seemingly mere moments into lockdown, with no preamble however an entire lot of intimate singing from Chris’ sparse entrance room.

Observe of the Yr
Nadine Shah – Women for Infants (Goats for Love)