British folk singer-songwriter Laura Marling is reinventing the feminine mystique.
The title of her sixth and latest studio album, 'Semper Femina', comes from a line in Virgil's epic poem 'The Aeneid': 'varium et mutabile semper femina', which roughly translates as 'a woman is an ever fickle and changeable thing'.
Laura shortened and adapted the line to 'semper femina' (meaning 'always a woman'), a phrase which has adorned her skin since having it tattooed on her thigh when she was 21.
With 'Semper Femina', Laura takes the listener on a deeply intense exploration of her own femininity and personal relationships. “Everything’s about sex, I believe,” Laura told Rachel Aroesti in an interview with The Guardian.
“This idea there’s a very finite difference between sexual and romantic love and friendship is crazy. I think you fall in love with friends. [Relationships between women have] either been ignored or commodified or sexualised, so I wanted to give a different perspective on that.”
Laura lands on Australian shores in June for a limited run of capital city shows to showcase 'Semper Femina'. Before she gets here, it's worth reviewing what makes Laura one of the most exciting, prolific and innovative young artists of her generation.
Laura was born in 1990 in Hampshire, England, the youngest of three daughters. She was introduced to folk music by her father, Sir Charles William Somerset Marling (also the fifth Marling Baronet), who ran a recording studio and helped shape much of Laura's musical taste and style.
An accomplished guitarist, Laura started on the instrument when she was just 3-years old and by 16 had signed her first major record deal. Upon leaving school, Laura relocated to the outskirts of London in the early, mid 2000s where she became involved in the early ramblings of a burgeoning musical movement the British press dubbed 'nu-folk', which included Mumford & Sons and Noah & The Whale.
At 21, with three Top Ten albums under her belt and being lauded as the 'songwriter of her generation', Laura eschewed her musical career, as well as a sense of her own sexual identity, to become a yoga instructor.
Apparently it didn't go very well. “You need to know a lot more than I know to do it well,” she admitted to The Guardian. “I didn’t feel like I had a gender in a weird way. I’d lost a lot of weight so I didn’t really have any feminine features... [I] looked like a young boy. It was quite a good experience of being a non-sexual presence in the world, like a eunuch.”
She has been nominated for a Mercury Award three times: for her debut album 'Alas, I Cannot Swim' in 2008, her second album 'I Speak Because I Can' in 2010 and her fourth album 'Once I Was An Eagle' in 2013.
Now, at 27, Laura has successfully transitioned back to songwriting and with 'Semper Femina' she has created what critics are hailing as her most compelling, personal and experimental record to date.
'Semper Femina' is available now.
Laura Marling Shows
Thu 8 Jun - The Triffid (Brisbane)Sat 10 Jun - The Gov (Adelaide)
Sun 11 Jun - The Forum Theatre (Melbourne)
Mon 12 Jun - Sydney Opera House
