SOUNDTRACK: LAURA MARLING-NonCOMM (May 18, 2017).
I enjoyed listening to the sets from NonCOMM back in May, so I dug into the archives and found out that a lot of sets are still available. I was especially happy to see this one from Laura Marling. The end of the blurb says:
You’ll have another chance to witness this fixating performance when Laura Marling comes to the TLA tomorrow night.
And that’s the show I saw.
After a hearty introduction from Bob Boilen, Laura Marling and crew swan-dived right into debut single, “Soothing,” off of her latest album, Semper Femina.
“Wild Fire” is an amazing example of her incredible voice as she speak-sings, whispers, coos and soars all over the verses which come together in the beautiful harmony of “meeeeeee” in the chorus. This song has a bunch of curses in it, but she kept it clean for this performance.
With a piercing yet still somehow soft gaze cutting through the crowd (I don’t know how she does the thing, but it’s true), Marling unleashed her otherworldly vocals — flawlessly ebbing and flowing with the track’s funkier rhythm.
“Always This Way” is a beautiful song off of Semper Femina. The guitar melody is delightful and, of course, her voice is outstanding.
“Next Time” has a simple, quiet, guitar melody which allows her voice to just wend all over this song. When the backing vocals come it it’s quiet angelic.
“Nothing, Not Nearly” has some wonderfully fast vocals that are as fun to try to figure out as they are to sing along to. It ends Semper Femina and is my favoirte song on the record. From the main melody to her wonderfully high notes this song is amazing.
She ended the set with “Once” from Once I Was an Eagle, the album that introduced me to her.
This song is very different from the others, but it still sounded great. When I saw her I wished she’d played ten songs from each album. Maybe some day I’ll see her do everything.
[READ: September 7, 2019] “The Stone”
This was an otherworldly story about an earthly object.
As a young girl, the main character’s family drove to an island in Lake Superior every summer. She was wandering in the brush one day when she felt sure someone was looking at her. There was no one there, but then she saw the stone.
It was smooth and black, half the size of a human skull and rain had carved what looked like two eye holes in it.
She was spooked at first but then was drawn to it. She brought it back to the vacation home and put it where she slept. But then she was sure one of her siblings would try to take it, so she hid it in her sleeping bag.
She brought home after the summer and put it in her room. Her mother saw it as she was getting them ready for school in September. Her mom asked if she’d found the rock the summer. She nodded and, after dinner, hid it in her room.
In school, a boy named Vic–he was always trouble–cut some of her ponytail with art scissors. The teacher saw her with the lock of hair in her hand and yelled at her for cutting her hair in class–something she should have outgrown years ago.
She never said it was Vic. Her mother asked her why she would do that. Her father lectured her about the beauty of her hair.
That night she put a clump of hair into one of the stone’s eye holes and she immediately felt better–everything was lifted off of her.
She began seeking solace in the stone–putting it in her lap, stroking it, leaving it on the edge of the bathtub as she soaked. She eventually brought the stone into the bath with her.
Vic became a varsity basketball player and was very popular. Eventually he asked is she would go out with him. She said she would. It was an uneventful date, although he did play with her hair and say how cool she was that she didn’t tattle.
He kissed her, which she tolerated. Then she went back up to her room, alone, and looked at the stone. It seemed to tell her everything was okay. So she took it to her bed and slept with it her beside her.
She continued this all through high school and college. Most people didn’t think anything about this odd behavior, but one girl thought it was pretentious and took the stone. She hid it on a high shelf. That nigh the stone fell off and hit the girl in the eye causing an orbital fracture and maybe a concussion. During the chaos the girl retrieved her stone and said nothing.
She dedicated herself to music and soon became proficient enough on the piano that she was hired by an orchestra. She always brought the stone on stage in a black bag.
Then one day she stopped bringing the bag with her. No one had asked about it back then and no one asked about it now, but it was noticed.
The reason she stopped bringing it is because she and the stone quarreled. She had dropped it on her knee in the bathtub. She jumped out and the stone fell on the floor and cracked in two.
She then called the man who had been hounding her for months and married him. Her piano playing was now filled with such emotion and precision that she was invited to tour Europe. She went wit her husband and left the stone behind.
After some time, her husband felt her pulling away. She was never mean or even inattentive, there was just a “glassy distraction.” that he noticed. He didn’t want a simulacrum of intimacy so he left. She wept for a time and then cleaned the house where she found the two pieces of the stone.
The stone had been around for millions of years and had had many things done to it. However, it had never been glued back together before.
The end of the story seems to restore a balance to the world and to her.
This was such a peculiar story but really enjoyable.
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