Laura Marling: to get dressed, haven’t you?” haven’t A E t v H e o m r y e Many artists have understandably run away from their release o n W dates during the pandemic and put their new music back. Not e i t h “You’ve just got just “You’ve Laura Marling. She brought her album forward. When you’ve made your best record, you don’t want to sit on it, though, do you? Laura Barton dials in to talk yoga, micro-dosing mushrooms, guitar lessons and love in a time of Covid-19. Interview Date: 2 April Laura Marling, at home in London: “It’s very weird when your life isn’t very much changed in lockdown.” This “The live guitar tutorials on Instagram? I’ve felt quite strongly that I’ve evening wanted to do something Laura for my hardcores.” Marling should be in Atlanta, playing a show at Terminal West, in the city’s midtown. Instead she is in her studio, in the basement of her home in north-east London, taking telephone calls and counting down the hours to the daily five o’clock government briefing and a nice glass of Côtes du Rhône. When we first spoke, a month or two ago, she said how much she was looking forward to this North American tour; how after an extended stretch of domestic harmony – sharing a home with her partner, and one of her sisters, she would finally have a chance to be alone. There were dates in New York, Santa Fe, Los Angeles; the promise of old friends, solo cocktails, perhaps the chance to write new songs. Now all has been postponed until (hopefully) the autumn. Still, she has kept the calendar alerts for the tour-that-once-was on her phone, and each morning they pop up to tell her where she might’ve been. “It’s tragic,” she laughs. “I was devastated not to be able to tour. But that’s small fry now.” The months to come are not unfolding quite as Marling imagined. In August, she was due to release her seventh solo album, Song For Our Daughter, a sublimely melodic record co-produced by Marling herself and inspired by Paul McCartney, Michael McDonald, Leonard Cohen’s Alexandra Leaving, “a desire to not indulge so much in the tragic feminine” and “the idea you could arm the next generation in a way that you weren’t armed.” Instead she made the decision to bring the album’s release forward, to early April, unleashing her new songs upon a world locked down, bewildered and in the absence of a Prime Minister, apparently led instead by Joe Wicks. Where were you when you realised that coronavirus was a serious thing? Well, me and my partner, George, we were in felt like I didn’t have anything to share really. New Zealand and Australia two weeks ago. I did a “This is so close I share enough. And I think you can get sucked festival in New Zealand. We missed the mandatory to my real life. into it, especially if you’re selling something. I don’t quarantine that kicked in the day after we arrived, really like explicit transactions like that. And now and we just had to get on a flight that day and come The only all of that seems out of the window, because all home, so it suddenly felt quite real. We did a of that pretension is useless. Now it’s not a transfer in Hong Kong, which was absolutely full difference is not transaction, it’s an exchange with people who of people, and we had masks and everything, seeing friends won’t be able to come to the shows. So it makes and everyone was taking it quite seriously there. more sense to me somehow. It was a bit odd. up-close. But For the first one, I did a DADF#AD tuning and Since lockdown descended you’ve begun a taught Daisy and Rambling Man. Everybody was series of live guitar tutorials on Instagram… I think I could very good at playing. It was fantastic. So I’m doing I felt quite strongly that I wanted to do something them twice a week now, on Thursdays and Sundays. for my hardcores. And that’s been actually really do it for quite The first one I didn’t do any preparation, I just nice. I’ve been so reluctant with social media. I just a long time.” pressed go and that was it. And now I’m trying to 20 JULY 2020 LAURA MARLING figure out the right language so I don’t lead people from my birthday [Marling turned 30 in February], up the garden path, or confuse them further maybe we’ll drink one of them. Maybe I’ll teach one than they need to be confused. I’m trying to be a of the songs or something. better teacher. You mention how long the album has been Why did you decide to bring the album ready. The closer you get to the record being release forward? out in the world, how differently do you feel I wrote it so long ago, and it’s done. There’s never about the songs? any great worry in the Laura Marling World that Well, it’s funny actually you say that, because I there is a time to be missed in releasing an album, hadn’t listened to it for a little while, and then I had because it’s not commercial at any time, and it’s a last-minute change of running order. It was not radio-friendly at any time. So I’m sort of in actually a suggestion by a friend of mine whose a luxurious position to do that in some ways. specialist subject is running orders. He sent me a Forward thinking: Marling’s It doesn’t really make a difference. new album, Song For Our different order and I had to go back and listen to it How will you be celebrating album release day? Daughter, was released early. all again. And so I came up with this amalgamation We’ve got some bottles of Champagne left over of his order and mine. I went on my daily walk and JULY 2020 21 LAURA MARLING “I’m lucky that I’ve got a studio in the basement. I’m it suddenly made so much more sense to me, that way, had that kind of time where you’re semi- locked in there album. Essentially I put all the songs with strings on distracted by the purpose of where you’re going, most of the day.” them in the middle. Because they were one apart but you’re also kind of lost in a train of thought. each before. And for some reason it made a much Last year you began studying for a masters more fluid, emotional journey to me. It made a lot in psychoanalysis. Have you been able to more sense. But it still doesn’t make total narrative continue your academic work? sense, I don’t think – not that it needed to. I’ve been doing my university stuff in the morning, Your albums often have a belly to them – very early in the morning. Which is just reading something like a suite of songs or one long articles and stuff. Oh God, what was I looking at intense song, such as the opening run in Once this morning…? Have you ever read any Laura I Was An Eagle, or The Beast In A Creature Mulvey? She’s brilliant. She just did a refresher of an I Don’t Know. Is that the role the string-led article she wrote in the ’70s about film criticism tracks fill in this album? with a feminist bent. So she was talking about Yes, exactly. I feel like the string tracks are this [Hitchcock’s] Vertigo, and the male gaze and the trembling, vulnerable bit in the middle now. And female facade. Which is right up my alley. they move me. Because sometimes I’ve listened to But you won’t be able to attend any lectures it and I’ve been completely unmoved by it. Which or tutorials? was worrying. But the other day I listened to it and We’re having remote lectures. It’s fine. It’s difficult it devastated me, in the right way. to not have the group conversation, and it’s weird Is that purely a matter of the new arrangement, to not be going to the library and having that or is it also distance from creating them? dedicated section of my day taken for that. But Yes, it’s that, and I think also listening in the that’s fine. I’m coping with it. I only recently context of this very anxious time. started taking micro doses of mushrooms and Do you listen to particular kinds of music in I’ve got this amazing routine: I get the bus from anxious times? Stoke Newington, takes fucking forever, and If I really need a good cry – like a good, wallowing, I go to the British Library. Just to have some proper centre-of-my-own-movie cry, I’ll put on something alone time. Somebody reminded me the other like Górecki’s music he wrote for the Holocaust, day that I haven’t micro-dosed because I haven’t Symphony No. 3. Or a good hardcore opera. been going out of the house. So maybe I need to Something dramatic.