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DIY Albums Of The Year: 4. Laura Marling - I Speak Because I Can

Tinkering on the edge of something more than just a folk singer, Laura Marling has a new self-assurance.

Posted 14th December 2010, 1:00pm in Features
DIY Albums Of The Year: 4. Laura Marling - I Speak Because I Can It's been quite a year for Laura Marling. She's seen herself become a magazine cover star, gain major props from the mainstream and even found herself popping up on daytime Radio 1 on a more than regular basis - not bad for someone playing a bit of folk. While Mumford & Sons independent traders pushed the twiddly dee end of the spectrum, Marling's second album was a much darker affair; something clearly respected amongst our writers. Read Jacob Sheppard's original review below.

So 'Alas I Cannot Swim' didn’t win the Mercury Music Prize of 2008 that saw the then 18-year-old Laura Marling gain attention and recognition well before her year’s debut. The undertones of loss, optimism, love and sadness on her follow up, 'I Speak Because I Can', bare the same skin as the previous long player; the unbelievably private feel of the lyrical content, in songs such as ‘Blackberry Stone’, paints a picture of a character in a relationship unable to leave an uncertain partnership with a loved one.

‘Devil Spoke’ couldn’t be more fitting for the opening track - its fast / slow ol' England feel and the abrupt change into ‘Made By Maid’ reminisce the last few cuts from ‘Alas I Cannot Swim’, towards the end of which it felt like Laura was starting to become a more melancholic, dark and questioning songwriter. It's not all darkness and sorrow, however, with uplifting changes on the likes of ‘What He Wrote’ and ‘Goodbye England’.

‘I Speak…’ depicts a more established artist concentrating on getting more out of her field. Listening to the two albums back-to-back shows a woman in a transition; a cliche maybe, but it can’t be ignored. Tinkering on the edge of something more than just a young folk singer, Laura’s playing and writing has a new self-assurance to it.

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