“I started out writing Semper Femina as if a man was writing about a woman. And then I thought it’s not a man, it’s me — I don’t need to pretend it’s a man to justify the intimacy of the way I’m looking and feeling about women. It’s me looking specifically at women and feeling great empathy towards them and by proxy towards myself.”
Laura Marling
British folk singer-songwriter Laura Marling's sixth album Semper Femina (2017) - which has already received critical acclaim - was timely released in tandem with this year's International Women's Day. Marling has an ample body of work that have memorably delved into the female psyche, but her latest effort - with an album title derived from a line from Virgil’s Aeneid, references to 20th-century psychoanalysts and the muses of famed sculptors and painters - might comes across as being too highfalutin to those who are not already appreciative of fine art and the history of ideas.
Rest assured that though Marling's influences may seem pompous, but her work is anything but. "Next Time", a recent single from the album, is a great example of her seamless ability to evoke psychological complexity in a simple, heartfelt way. In the tradition of introverted, minimalist singer-songwriters like Joni Mitchell and Carole King, Marling manifests her ideological preoccupations in understatedly poetic lyricism that dwell on the unpredictable and varying emotions that accompany significant human relationships:
'It feels like a long time since I was freeIt feels like the right time to take that seriouslyIt feels like the trees are a peculiar greenIt feels like the air is hung heavilyI don't want to be the kindStruck by fear to run and hideI'll do better next timeIt feels like warning signs were there for us to seeIt feels like they taught us ignore diligentlyI feel her, I hear her weakly screamAm I really so unkindTo turn around and close my eyes?I'll do better next timeI'll do better next timeIt feels like the last breath we will ever shareIt feels like the last time I'll run my fingers through your hairI can no longer close my eyesWhile the world around me diesAt the hands of folks like meIt seems they fail to seeThere may neverNext time be'
Lyrics: Genius
The subtext is not immediately explicit, but it appears that Marling has ambivalently caused great pain to another woman (a lover? a friend? a family member?). Marling has a reputation for gynocentrism, but here she seems to be blurring the lines between female sociality and homoeroticism, while staying clear of the tendency to fetish or objectify Sapphic behaviour: “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" (Rachel Aroesti, The Guardian).
Marling's thoughtful and empathic vocal melodies make it hard to believe that she has been 'so unkind', but they make her resolution to reorient her moral compass 'next time' readily compelling. Accompanied by sparse and subtly dynamic acoustic guitar pickings, string-section arrangements and bass notes, she offers a clear-eyed view of the flawed, beautiful ambiguities of human thought, action and emotion.
