Laura Marling does not do encores.
Not for her the often empty ritual of leaving the stage and reappearing with feigned surprise as a returning heroine, and for this the Home Counties troubadour should be applauded, although perhaps not too loudly.
Because it takes a special kind of performer to genuinely add to what has gone on before. Richard Thompson scoring the equivalent of an extra time hat-trick at this same venue earlier this year or Texas-based Eric Taylor having the PA switched back on in a Leith bar lounge to deliver a devastatingly epic murder ballad spring readily to mind. And Marling does not appear to pack that kind of weight.
What she does have that impresses is an extraordinary self-possession. It takes quite a force of personality to command a bare stage like this alone the way she did with hardly a murmur from her audience, even as she devoted, as she said, 15% of her on stage time to tuning her two guitars. We never did find out what happened between her and the now absent guitar tech. But that would be to go deeper than the surface, and while Marling has an attractive singing voice and is a capable guitarist, her performing style, for me, is more admirable than involving.
Songs such as the Master Hunter hinted at some root cause that riled her into creative action and the nostalgic Goodbye England (Covered In Snow) suggested a sense of time, place and frost in the air, but it took Townes Van Zandt's For The Sake Of The Song, her sole cover, to draw her closer to something with a sense of completeness.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article