I Speak Because I Can - Laura Marling

Every once in a while, you come across an odd, strange little thing that rebukes your stereotypes and makes you question what you think you understand about this world. Laura Marling, current princess of the London folkscene, is one such example. Her small frame and childlike face reminds you of another little blonde girl (a more classically featured Dakota Fanning, perhaps) – and then she opens her mouth. And then she sings.

I Speak Because I Can is an album made instinctively in the female voice – the album opens with the fierce, defiant Devil’s Spoke about being with a haunted man; protecting him against the symbolic devil and accepting his ghosts. It’s raw and instinctive, and the album continues along the same vein. In Rambling Man, she relies on a melody that sings like an anthem (that bursts into a guitar-and-banjo chorus midway) and lyrics that read like a manifesto:

Beaten, battered and cold

My children will live just to grow old

But if I sit here and weep I’ll be blown over by the slightest of breeze

Oh give me to a rambling man

Let it always be known

That I was who I am.

What draws you in is Marling’s vocals – raw and rough, angry yet tempered, she projects the emotion of the song rather than invite the listener to relate sympathise, and she does this so well that you worry when she sings it and growl when she does. The lyrics are haunting throughout, with lush imagery that borrows from nature equally as it does from your nightmares.

Forgive me Hera

I cannot stay

He cut out my tongue

There is nothing to stay.

Loved me alone

He threw me away

He laughed at my sins

In his arms I must stay.

(What He Wrote)

As dark as the album goes – and it is a pretty bleak one – the stories it tells are blatantly that of women. A recurring theme is abuse both emotional and physical, as well as emancipation from it. And yet one cannot help but listen and get drawn into the messy worlds these voices inhabit, because they are that rare balance of being strange-yet-so-familiar. The music serves more like a background that pulls these different stories together, with soaring choruses and a guttural country rhythm (influenced extensively from her boyfriend’s own band, Mumford & Sons) as the album’s backbone. The songs bleed into each other while remaining distinct, and before you know it, you’ve run the gamut from hopeful to scorned, ending with self-aware resignation – the final track is, fittingly, I Speak Because I Can:

I speak because I can, to anyone I trust enough to listen.

You speak because you can to anyone that'll hear what you say.

If this is your first listen to Laura Marling (as it was mine), then it’ll be a heady ride that sucks you in. I suspect that if you’re familiar with her first album, Alas I Cannot Swim, you’ll be surprised by how quickly she’s matured, and how much. Her lyrics have gained a more allegorical poetry, and her music is a lot richer – you might miss her simple melodies and honest, straightforward words.

But the Laura Marling of Alas was but a girl, and I Speak is a story about women, as explored by a new woman, with a sensitivity that belies her twenty years. By the end of I Speak, you’ll be emotionally exhausted, like you’ve lived the many lives she has. And you’ll wonder what she could possibly bring in another twenty years.

Track Listing:

“Devil’s Spoke” – 3:40

“Made by Maid” – 2:51

“Rambling Man” – 3:16

“Blackberry Stone” – 3:28

“Alpha Shallows” – 3:42

“Goodbye England” – 3:45

“Hope in the Air” – 4:32

“What He Wrote” – 4:07

“Darkness Descends” – 3:40

“I Speak Because I Can” – 3:59