#322 laura marling – what he wrote

sorry i haven’t written in a while. i’ve been busy with things, but i’ve also had so much to write i didn’t know where to start. almost paralyzing, sometimes. i was just about to go to bed, not writing again, when this song gripped me in the still of the night, the voice of a girl who, as i found out, battled and overcame her shyness to write an album stunning as this.

in “what he wrote”, laura marling draws inspiration from an article about letters between wives and their absent husbands during the second world war, descending into their abandonment and brokenness, stepping not just in their shoes but immersing herself in their words, minds, souls. the circular momentum of the song seems to capture this spiral of emotions perfectly, freezing them in the moments where they once belonged.

you just know marling feels for those she writes and sings about, not least considering her own struggles. the journey she must have undertaken assures me she understands in no small measure the wives whose words she adopts and whose silence she inhabits: “we speak when spoken to, and that suits us well, that suits us well“. – dan.

mp3: laura marling – what he wrote

laura marling’s album is titled i speak because i can, and was released earlier this year.