Laura Marling will release her seventh solo album – Song For Our Daughter – this coming Friday, April 10th via Partisan/Chrysalis. Marling made the announcement last night during her newly reoccurring Isolation Guitar Tutorials video series, and also shared album highlight “Held Down,” which takes an unexpected turn into a lush, melodic poppiness reminiscent of Wings-era McCartney.
Initially planned for late summer, Marling explains her reasons for moving up the release in light of current events:
My new album Song For Our Daughter is coming out this week, ahead of our planned schedule. In light of the change to all our circumstances, I saw no reason to hold back on something that, at the very least, might entertain, and at its best, provide some sense of union.
It’s strange to watch the facade of our daily lives dissolve away, leaving only the essentials; those we love and our worry for them. An album, stripped of everything that modernity and ownership does to it, is essentially a piece of me, and I’d like for you to have it. I’d like for you, perhaps, to hear a strange story about the fragmentary, nonsensical experience of trauma and an enduring quest to understand what it is to be a woman in this society. When I listen back to it now, it makes more sense to me than when I wrote it. My writing, as ever, was months, years, in front of my conscious mind. It was there all along, guiding me gently through the chaos of living. And that, in itself, describes the sentiment of the album – how would I guide my daughter, arm her and prepare her for life and all of its nuance? I’m older now, old enough to have a daughter of my own, and I feel acutely the responsibility to defend The Girl. The Girl that might be lost, torn from innocence prematurely or unwittingly fragmented by forces that dominate society. I want to stand behind her and whisper in her ear all the confidences and affirmations I had found so difficult to provide myself. This album is that strange whisper; a little distorted, a little out of sequence, such is life.
I want you to have it.
Taking much of the production reins herself, alongside long-time collaborators Ethan Johns and Dom Monks, ‘Song For Our Daughter’ comes at a major crossroads for the London-based songwriter who’s already earned Grammy nominations, Brit Awards and Mercury nods en route to becoming a wholly singular voice in the modern recording industry. In the wake of touring behind 2017’s ‘Semper Femina,’ Marling stepped away from both her record label and her management, and for the first time found herself without any firm idea of her future, ready to distance herself from the idea of being Laura Marling.
To achieve this, she chose the unexpected: collaborating with the theatre director Robert Icke, putting out an acclaimed dissonant melodic electronic record as the duo LUMP (who will release their second album in the next year), and she also enrolled in a masters degree in psychoanalysis. The effect of exploring beyond her familiar world — her collaborative experiments and academic studies particularly, has been to liberate her, and the music on ‘Song For Our Daughter’ is among the most spacious, affecting, and overall best of her entire career.
New tour dates will be announced imminently. Laura’s previously announced US, UK and European tour dates have been postponed.
Song For Our Daughter tracklist:
1. Alexandra
2. Held Down
3. Strange Girl
4. Only The Strong
5. Blow By Blow
6. Song For Our Daughter
7. Fortune
8. The End Of The Affair
9. Hope We Meet Again
10. For You
