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Laura Marling didn’t take lockdown lightly. When the UK received its stay-at-home orders at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, the 30-year-old singer-songwriter decided to release her seventh studio album, Song for Our Daughter, months before it was originally due to come out. ‘I saw no reason to hold back on something that, at the very least, might entertain, and might even provide some sense of union,’ explained Marling. The heartfelt, delicate collection of songs united both fans and critics, who praised the intimate body of work, many branding it her finest yet. 

Her first album to be written while not on the road, Song for Our Daughter was created during a period of inner reflection after Marling moved to North London to live near her two older sisters following a decade of globetrotting and soul-searching, including stints in Los Angeles and on England’s South Coast.  

With her world tour cancelled because of the coronavirus, Marling became one of the first artists to experiment with streaming live music to fans while the UK’s venues found themselves shuttered indefinitely. Tonight she makes a return to the Proms (she previously made an appearance at the 大象传媒 Radio 6 Music Prom back in 2013), having played a pair of solo shows to an empty, candle-lit Union Chapel in Islington back in June. She is accompanied by London-based string orchestra, the 12 Ensemble, playing material from across her storied career. The string arrangements have been newly created by Rob Moose, an accomplished instrumentalist and founder of classical group yMusic. Moose has previously written and recorded with Bon Iver, as well as working as conductor and orchestrator for Sufjan Stevens and Antony and the Johnsons. Marling is also accompanied by double bass player and jazz musician Nick Pini.

Born to musical parents in Berkshire – her father ran a recording studio and her mother is a music teacher – Marling made her name as a prodigious 16-year-old, silencing the crowds at London’s pubs and clubs with her devastating solo sets during the indie boom of the mid-2000s. But her youth wasn’t necessarily an advantage; she once resorted to gigging on the street after a venue refused to let her in because she was under age. Marling’s finger-picked acoustic sound – as well as her fuss-free attitude – quickly found favour in the pages of NME and broadsheet newspapers alike.

Released to widespread acclaim when she was just 18, Marling’s sparkling debut, Alas I Cannot Swim, was nominated for the Mercury Prize and showcased her preternatural songwriting ability, as evidenced in the lilting ‘Tap at My Window’, based on the opening line of Philip Larkin’s poem ‘This Be the Verse’.

Two years later, 2010 saw her second album, I Speak Because I Can, and also her second Mercury Prize nomination. Documenting Marling’s move from teenager to womanhood, this rootsier collection contains one of her best-loved songs, ‘Goodbye England (Covered in Snow)’, all about missing home while touring. Hushed and wintery, Marling has previously branded the romantic track ‘sort of soppy’, adding that the lyric ‘We will keep you, little one’ concerns her relationship with her parents and siblings. ‘In my family I’m “Little One”, even though I’m about twice the size of them all,’ says Marling. ‘There’s some lines like that in my songs that I think only people who know me would know where that sits with me. That’s one of them.’

Proving her prolific output, in 2011 Marling released her third album, A Creature I Don’t Know. Now weaving in influences from jazz and stepping away from her traditional folksy sound, she also expanded on her literary references, with the rolling ‘Salinas’ named after the Californian town where writer John Steinbeck was born. This storytelling song also bore the delicate pulse of country music and, like much of Marling’s work, looked at the family ties that bind, as she sang from the viewpoint of a tearaway youth, exclaiming: ‘My mother was a saviour of six foot of bad behaviour.’

There was yet another Mercury Prize nod for 2013’s Once I Was An Eagle, in which Marling dramatically experimented with structure. The first four songs from her fourth album rolled into each other as one starkly powerful suite, with ‘Take the Night Off’, ‘I Was an Eagle, ‘You Know’ and ‘Breathe’ a continuous, dramatic piece in which you can find heartbreak, hope and heroism in equal measure. ‘I will not be a victim of circumstance,’ she determines in ‘I Was an Eagle’, cathartically moving through a break-up and coming out with an enviable sense of self-possession.

This feeling of confidence continued through to 2015’s Short Movie, which was self-produced and also saw Marling playing electric guitar for the first time. That was followed in 2017 by Semper Femina, whose title is borrowed from the ancient Roman poet Virgil, which prompted Marling’s first ever GRAMMY nomination. An incisive study in female relationships and desire, the first song written for the record, ‘The Valley’, is a spiralling, strangely uplifting ballad inspired by seeing a close friend mourn the death of her father.

Which brings us to 2020 and Song for Our Daughter, Marling's latest album to receive a Mercury Prize nomination (the results are announced on 24 September). This seventh album is something of a guidebook for Marling’s imagined offspring, especially in its sparse but deeply melodic title-track. ‘How would I guide my daughter, arm her and prepare her for life and all of its nuance?’ asks Marling, who has now begun to consider the possibility of becoming a mother herself. ‘I want to stand behind her and whisper in her ear all the confidences and affirmations I had found so difficult to provide myself.’ Tonight Marling will be playing songs from all these albums and more. 

<sup>Programme note © Leonie Cooper

A regular contributor to ‘NME’, ‘The Guardian’ and ‘Time Out’, Leonie Cooper is a London-based music and arts journalist.</sup>