Laura Marling – Semper Femina (Kobalt)

On her 6^th album Semper Femina, UK singer/songwriter Laura Marling explores femininity, in its power, mystery and vulnerability with by songs filled with beautiful observations of friendship – particularly female friendship and the intimate and intricate psychologically behind each relationship.

As a father of three girls. I can’t escape hearing the day to day details that make up the friendships my girls have between each of their friends.  Unlike, and yet similar to, the complicated and manipulative relationships painted in movies and TV shows, theirs are built on gossamer thin layers of trust and commonality.  The friendships rely heavily on emotional support, often unwritten and unspoken but always expected.  Loyalty and empathy ride alongside betrayal, jealousy and territorial concerns when they talk.  This is not directly to me, of course.  I am not in the room, as far as they are concerned.  This is intimate, between them only.  But I hear things.  Still, what would I know?  I’m from Mars, and they are Venetians, after all.

But Marling knows what I’m talking about.  For her new album she’s used a number of conversations by women or about women and their friendships as the foundations of her song writing.  The title, Semper Femina, is from a line from Virgil’s epic poem The Aeneid: “Varium et mutabile semper femina”.  Translated roughly, it means “A woman is an ever fickle and changeable thing.”.  Marling has a tattoo of the line.  Shortened to “Semper femina”, or “Always a woman”, it makes a fitting and fascinating title and explains the project more fully.  Simply put, it’s an intimate, devoted exploration of femininity and female relationships.

 

Oddly, her rationale behind her album title seems a little patronising on the surface.  To claim women can be ‘fickle’ doesn’t seem like something a feminist would do.  But it could be an action of empowerment, too.  Like the re-ownership of the word ‘Queer’.  Turning derogatory into a positive.  In a similar way, she’s taking back ‘fickle’ (previously meaning ‘ditsy’) and re-establishing it as the right to choose or change at will and whenever.”  Marling uses her quote, fondly and slightly cheekily in Nouel: “Oh Nouel, you know me well/ And I didn’t even show you the scar/ Fickle and changeable/ Semper femina”.  It’s a simple song, the guitar a mere platform for the lyrics, which are closer to poetry than a simple accompaniment to a good tune.

The simple but luscious Always This Way comes as a surprisingly mournful account of a friendship cut short.  It’s never resolved, which makes it harder to get closure.  You can hear this in the soul searching contemplation as she counts up the price of her investment.  “Twenty-five years and nothing to show for it/Nothing of any weight.” Somewhere in the end, though the relationship is closed, more like and account than a farewell bidding: “At least I can say/That my debts have been paid.”

No doubt Marling will one day be the subject of literature studies, her song writing is so meticulous, derivative and at times intriguing.  A good example is the cryptic lyrics in Soothing, which just continue to layer up like a thriller novel but then, inexplicably end.  Leaving us wondering what happens next.  “Oh, my hopeless wanderer / You can’t come in / You don’t live here anymore / Oh, some creepy conjurer / Who touched the rim / Whose hands are in the door.”  I first thought that this describes a man, uninvited.  A past lover, an ex.  She turns to a friend for help.  “I need soothing, My lips aren’t moving My God is brooding.”

Global politics is not entirely excluded on this album.  Next Time speaks of a maternal approach Mother Earth.  As if the planet was a child to be cared for, However, it also raises the warning signs we are conditioned to “ignore diligently”.  “I can no longer close my eyes/While the world around me dies/At the hands/Of folks/Like me” It’s not just a hippy-trippy notion, given Trump has just killed off America’s climate change regulations and sold voters down the river with lies about new mining jobs. It shows there’s still some of the fighting spirit of her earlier albums in there, especially 2010’s I Speak Because I Can.

And so what have we concluded, class?  This is a complicated, layered album of songs.  Yes, it is fickle in places.  The mood swings, the topics slide and the answers are often the questions.  This is what I know.  But no doubt Marling is the expert.  This is her demographic, one she’s most familiar with, being from Venus, it’s right in her flight path.

Tim Gruar