The stage has never been a comfortable place for Laura Marling.
On this night at The Gov (10 June), though, she looked at ease, at home even with no need for soothing.
Laura has toured the world for a decade, yet every rendition of her back catalogue seems like the first time she has played it; she never goes on autopilot. Her body is possessed by the emotion that triggered the outpouring; her eyes stare off into the middle distance – as though back in time – as she delivers her tortured poetry behind a deadpan mask.
She is like the Mona Lisa; poets and scholars could spend centuries debating what lies behind those eyes at times.
On ‘Nothing, Not Nearly’, she recalls when she didn’t smile for a year, not really, and you can believe it. However, when, on the opening track of the evening, ‘Soothing’, she warns that “you can’t come in, you don’t live here anymore”, you heed that advice; it is delivered with sincere menace.
A genuine rage appeared during ‘Next Time’ as she sang “I can no longer close my eyes, as the world around me dies at the hands of people like me”. 'Wild Fire' is a searing critique of a former lover, akin to Dylan’s 'Like A Rolling Stone'. An ocean of complexity swirls within Laura’s serene façade.
Despite the intense emotional voyage undertaken during every song, Laura would smile coyly at the audience’s applause at journey’s end, her dimpled face gazing at the floor. As the evening progressed, though, she opened like a flower in response to the warmth of her reception.
Her first foray into banter was knowingly superficial, as she spoke of the contrast between Adelaide’s weather and London’s. Her repartee with her fellow bandmates, though, was fine comedy; the simple and generic process of introducing the band was splendidly modified.
Each band member’s social media handles were amusingly shared and there was the traditional “fun fact” contest, where Laura played quizmaster, prompting each member to provide an item of trivia for the audience’s perusal and evaluation. When backing vocalist Emma Topolski reminisced about her Brisbane winning fact that kangaroos have three vaginas, a heckler amusingly shouted “only the female ones”.
Her band appeared to be as tightly knit as a family; her father’s guitar was played by her guitarist, while her sister was selling merch. When her band departed mid-set she delivered a solo segment, which featured Townes Van Zandt’s ‘For The Sake Of A Song’, where she asks “why does she sing sad songs for me, I’m not the one”.
On this night, nobody was asking this question; the only question being asked was “why doesn’t she do encores? Why did she have to leave so soon?”
