Laura Marling
Short Movie (Ribbon Music)
On Laura Marling’s fifth studio album, her adopted home of Los Angeles rears its sun-bleached head to inspire a collection of songs that read like a stream-of-consciousness diary entry.
She sings, “I’m just a horse without a name” in opening song “Warrior”, perhaps a metaphor for her place in the world, or a relationship gone awry.“False Hope” channels Chan Marshall (Cat Power) with its gritty guitars and Marling’s soft-growl style of singing. Just when you think you’ve pegged her sound, she gives us “Strange”, a near spoken word Beat-poet exercise in real talk. “I don’t love you like you love me, I’m pretty sure that you know.”
Clearly there is existential woe creeping into her once feathery compositions. In “How Can I”, she sings “I’m going back east where I belong” with a beguiling vibrato: a saudade-soaked love note to her native England. Like Joni Mitchell or Chan Marshall, she embodies the vagrant singer-songwriter. She is a woman of the road with more wisdom than she cares to share. Short Movie is her strongest, most raw work to date that you can’t help but fall into.
Rating: ★★★★
