Featured photo by Hollie Fernando
Laura Marling broke away from the expectations of a folk artist with her electric and angry 2015 album, Short Movie. Now she’ll shrug off prescribed confines of gender and sexuality with her next effort, Semper Femina.
Due out March 10th via her own More Alarming Records, Semper Femina is Marling’s sixth record overall. Written largely while touring behind Short Movie, the album’s nine tracks were recorded in Los Angeles and produced with Blake Mills.
“I started out writing Semper Femina as if a man was writing about a woman,” Marling explained in a press release. “And then I thought it’s not a man, it’s me — I don’t need to pretend it’s a man to justify the intimacy of the way I’m looking and feeling about women. It’s me looking specifically at women and feeling great empathy towards them and by proxy towards myself.”
As a first listen to this empathetic approach, she’s shared the album’s lead single, “Soothing”. A jazz lounge bass line sets the sensual bed on which lays Marling’s exquisite finger picking and the contradiction of her desires (“I banish you with love/ You can’t come in/ You don’t live here anymore”). The song comes via a video that marks Marling’s directorial debut, a stirring, latex-covered representation of the lyrics’ tension. Check it out below.
Pre-orders for Semper Femina are going on now. Marling will head out on a run of UK tour dates to support the release in March; find those dates beneath the album art and tracklist below.
Semper Femina Album Artwork:
Semper Femina Tracklist:
01. Soothing
02. The Valley
03. Wild Fire
04. Don’t Pass Me By
05. Always This Way
06. Wild Once
07. Next Time
08. Nouel
09. Nothing Not Nearly
Laura Marling 2017 Tour Dates:
03/08 – Leeds, UK @ O2 Academy
03/09 – Bristol, UK @ Colston Hall
03/10 – Glasgow, UK @ O2 ABC
03/12 – Manchester, UK @ Albert Hall
03/13 – Oxford, UK @ O2 Academy Oxford
03/14 – Birmingham, UK @ Institute
03/16 – Brighton, UK @ Dome
03/17 – London, UK @ Roundhouse
03/18 – Salisbury, UK @ City Hall
