Laura Marling

Semper Femina

More Alarming Records

LAURA Marling's stately drift into Americana continues on this, her sixth album in nine years. But though both feet are now planted firmly in Los Angeles, where she has lived since 2015, her grab-bag of literary influences shows that her muse remains on this side of the Atlantic: she borrows her album title from a line in Virgil and some of her mysticism and cock-eyed romanticism from another poet, German visionary Rainer Maia Rilke. And while songs like The Valley, Wild Fire and Next Time are delivered in a full-blown Nashville-style accent, her spoken word interludes on Wild Once remind you she's still a Home Counties girl at heart.

Marling's chosen producer here, Blake Mills, also worked with Alabama Shakes on their Sound & Color album and he brings to Semper Femina some of the same powerful dynamics it had, particularly on Soothing and Nothing, Not Nearly, the tracks which open and close the album. The first is a skeletal affair, just drums and double bass, while the second punctuates Marling's close-miked vocals with churning, rough-edged guitars. Meanwhile Marling's grand theme – femininity in all its guises – is served by dense lyrics which, as ever with her, pay out a little more on every listen.

Laura Marling plays the O2 ABC, Glasgow, tonight.