Music is tribal, right? Just by looking at the audience, with the sound turned off, you’d have a good chance of working out what kind of music you were listening to: ska, mod, heavy metal, dub, folk, rock etc. It’s the one thing that makes music such an exciting thing to hear and to be a part of. It’s also one of the things that stops great music from, perhaps, being embraced by a broader spectrum of people. We still have a profoundly tribalistic mentality.

Take Laura Marling, for instance. A friend recently painted her music (and by extension, herself) as privileged melancholia. Meaning that she lacked working class grit or kudos. I get that (although her new album Semper Femina is not so much melancholic as reflective, and indeed intelligent and nuanced). What I don’t quite get is the fact that the audience tonight was uniformly liberal, white, and middle class. Surely there are some Marling fans out there who are from different ‘tribes’? Are we still so latently tribal that we’re afraid of stepping out of our comfort zone, with an open mind and open heart? It was also a very respectful audience too. I didn’t clock one person using their hand held device to take some souvenirs back home with them. Or if they did they did so surreptitiously…

The politeness was briefly punctuated by the almost obligatory “I love you” shouts, but apart from that this was a respectful evening, with the main attraction gaining well earned, if slightly restrained, applause at the end of each song. The first half of the show concentrated on material from Semper Femina: as a new album this may not have been familiar to many here. Tonight she performed with a rare full band in tow, demonstrating her recently found eclecticism, indeed electrification (that began with 2015’s Short Movie album). Beginning with the sensual grooves of ‘Soothing’, a song that, as its lead track and lead single, marked out the terrain to be explored via the album. It’s one that observes females from a woman’s perspective, entailing love, lust, relationships, trust and perception. Marling explores this thoughtfully, with much elegance and tenderness, albeit sometimes from an observational distance.

Although the warmth and intimacy of the album is lost somewhat in the confines of a large concert hall, all eyes are on Marling, a serene figure on stage, who really comes into her own when playing solo. It’s then that her skill as a songwriter and singer shines through, unencumbered by a band that, whilst tasteful and good throughout, is superfluous to requirements at times, particularly on the beautiful finger-picking of ‘Nouel’ and the mournful ‘What He Wrote’.

There are lighter moments tonight, and the realisation that Marling is of this world, when she fluffs some lines, giggles a bit, and admits her playing is not quite up to scratch due to a broken nail. She even banters a little with her band, whom Marling asks at one point whilst on stage alone, “Did anything fun happen backstage?” “Yeah!” replies one of the Tolpolski backing singers, who declines to say exactly what. “And I was out here being sincere,” remarks Marling, all smiles and laughter.

The second half of the show sees Marling delve into her back catalogue, modestly assuming that the audience has had enough of these new songs. So, we get a kind of ‘Best Of’ with the likes of ‘I Speak Because I Can’, ‘Sophia’, ‘Don’t Ask Me Why’, and ‘Darkness Descends’. In comparison, Semper Femina reaches the heights of some of these songs. Of course, these goldies gain increasing amounts of appreciation as the set moves on. But, like all good things, the new ones need a bit of time to bed down, to be fully appreciated. Already, the album reviews are almost invariably glowing.

Once again Marling pre-warns that there will be no encore, before launching into ‘Rambling Man’, a song that she has previously declared to be her favourite one to perform, and a song that encapsulates her ability to morph from the melancholic to the upbeat in one swoop, without going anywhere near overwrought or overindulged. “Let it always be known that I was who I am,” she sings. She may be privileged, but she is also an exquisite artist, a painter of music that we should all be able to appreciate.
Jeff Hemmings

Website:  www.lauramarling.com
Twitter: twitter.com/lauramarlinghq
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