Laura Marling

Camden roundhouse, London,March 21, 2017

- Lucy Jones

LAURA Marling glows under a spotlight in the middle of the stage. She is wearing a full-length cream gown, her hair is bright white and her skin is the colour of milk. Green leaves creep up her microphone stand and stage equipment. Is she a bride? Surely that would be too traditional for a writer keen to upend female archetypes. a spectre? Like the cloaked ghoul and her band of bushbabies in surrealist painter Leonora Carrington’s The Ancestor, one of Marling’s ‘Holy Trinity’ of inspirations? Nope, too bleak; Marling strives to rewrite the idea of the ‘tragic woman’. Well, then, perhaps she’s an archangel, but of the old-school variety, neither male nor female. Her latest, sixth, album Semper Femina started out as songs written from a male perspective, after all. But the seven geometric symbols projected onto the wall behind skew the pastoral scene. Design-wise, they echo Prince’s squiggle, the astrological gender symbols, and ogham, the ancient alphabet. Uncut is told that they represent the names of the new songs, but what do they really mean? The cryptic Marling invites interpretation before she’s even started playing.

“Soothing” opens the set with the strings of the album version eschewed for backing vocals from the male members of the band, who play rhythm guitar, bass and drums. Green and purple lights give the impression the aurora Borealis has come to Camden’s roundhouse. “I banish you with love,” sings Marling, but there is a warmth to the music and the languid way the band are playing.