With six albums in nine years, no one can accuse Laura Marling of laziness.
It was just the October before last that she was last playing in Brisbane touring her enigmatic fifth album, ‘Short Movie’. Less than two years later and she’s back playing a handful of Australian dates culminating at the Sydney Opera House as part of Vivid LIVE 2017.
Melbourne’s Tiny Little Houses were in support and the crowd warmed to them right from the get go. Their breezy lo-fi pop contrasted with bouts of fuzz may not be the obvious pairing with Marling, but with songs as good as theirs nobody seemed to mind.
The series of Leonard Cohen tracks that played in the background between acts was enough to transition anyway.
Laura’s latest album, ‘Semper Femina’, is a personal journey into gender and sexuality. It followed a podcast series Laura had made that featured guests such as HAIM, Dolly Parton and Emmylou Harris exploring femininity in creativity.
Though not a concept album as such, these aspects heavily influenced the end result and created a bone fide classic that proved there’s plenty more that Laura still has some surprises up her sleeve.
The first few tracks of the evening (8 June at The Triffid in Brisbane) were taken from ‘Semper Femina’, which would make up the majority of the set list for the night kicking off with the sublime ‘Soothing’.
It may not have had the same effect with its lead part played on a guitar rather than a double bass, but as soon as Laura started to sing none of that mattered. The contrasting vocal line and brooding bassline creates a sinister underbelly that contrasts the delicate vocals, which betrayed any trace of jet lag.
While the whole backing band are a perfect accompaniment to Laura’s songs, the Topolski sisters’ note-perfect backing vocals sounded like aural honey when complementing Laura’s voice. ‘The Valley’ in particular with the combination of voices sounded angelic, yet full of character.
They made multiple references to struggling with the effects of an espresso martini they’d had before going on stage, yet it didn’t affect their ability to hit each note.
It wasn’t until the middle of the set when the rest of the band left the stage that we started hearing some older songs played by Laura alone on her guitar including a cover of the Townes Van Zandt song ‘For The Sake Of The Song’.
Between tracks as she tuned her guitar for the next song she asked how many people had been to see her play before, with cheers coming from the majority of those in attendance. It’s no surprise that she has such a hardcore fan base with the quality of the music she makes.
Towards the end of the set, she had each band member attempt to dazzle the audience with a fact that they had learned, one by one. Though the comments on weather and jet lag got a few cheers from the audience, it was the supposed fact that kangaroos have three vaginas that won the popular vote. The whole thing was incredibly awkward, yet in an endearing way.
Just before playing ‘Rambling Man’ as the last song of the night, Laura reminded the audience that they don’t play encores. “If you want an encore, then pretend that song was the last one and this is the encore.”
Though this was the first time I’ve seen Laura live, I’ll be in the audience ready to cheer as someone who has seen her before the next time she’s in town.
