L – is for Laura Marling

Monday 15th February

Laura Marling is a very recent artist, she emerged in this Century, but in some ways she sounds as if she should have been around in the Seventies.  Although she doesn’t sound at all like Joni Mitchell I think she is very similar.  A singer songwriter who writes intensely personal yet oblique lyrics and sings with an emotional intensity that really moves you.

And her guitar playing seems quite unique too, an often frenzied, sometimes sultry strumming.  It seems as if she has just walked up to the microphone and started playing and singing what ever came into her head, words and chords tumbling out in a stream of consciousness with very little structure or even real melodies to the songs.  But I love it, it has an emotional honesty to it that I find addictive.  And she is still very young and changing slightly with each records. Definitely one to watch.

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