[27], Song for Our Daughter was met with widespread critical acclaim. [21] Marling's song is about her fascination with Cohen's attitudes towards women. At just 36 minutes, it’s her shortest record thus far, but it’s simultaneously Marling’s most straightforward, musically simplistic record to date and her most beautiful release yet.

[20], "Alexandra" was inspired by Leonard Cohen's song "Alexandra Leaving". [9][10][3] Johns previously produced Marling's albums I Speak Because I Can (2010),[11] A Creature I Don't Know (2011)[12] and Once I Was an Eagle (2013). Laura Beatrice Marling (born 1 February 1990) is a British folk singer-songwriter. Marling described the album as "stripped of everything that modernity and ownership does to it... essentially a piece of me".

The album was co-produced by Marling with longtime collaborator Ethan Johns and was primarily recorded at Monnow Valley Studio. [3] The album's title is figurative, with Marling writing to a fictional daughter.

[22][7] "The End of the Affair" is about the "infinite" nature of love and the "idea of a private mourning of love" which cannot be shared. It’s the first time she’s prominently featured the instrument across her seven albums: You’d have to go all the way back to “Typical” from her 2007 EP My Manic and I, which predates her debut full-length, to find anything that resembles it. In fact, I think it's very brave of people to live that way. [4] The songs are written to an imaginary child, with Marling stating it allowed her to offer her "all the confidences and affirmations I found so difficult to provide myself". [22] "Fortune" is about a powerless woman unable to escape her circumstance, and is inspired by Marling's mother's "running away fund" that she has never used. As a result, her albums are centered around specific characters—Once I Was An Eagle’s Rosie, A Creature I Don’t Know’s The Beast and Sophia (the Greek goddess of wisdom)—or around a looser subject (Semper Femina’s look at femininity or societal gender roles on I Speak Because I Can). It was released on 10 April 2020. Laura Marling's vocals are accompanied mostly by acoustic guitar and light percussion, but are backed at times by piano and string arrangements. “What became of Alexandra, did she make it through?” Marling asks at the beginning of “Alexandra” before seemingly answering her own question via different snapshots and stories throughout the next nine songs. It was recorded at home "on the fly" on her laptop and is included on the album in its original demo form. [5] Neil McCormick of The Daily Telegraph called the album Marling's "most measured and mature work" and praised her "skillful guitar playing" and "exquisite" harmonies. "[37] In her review for Mojo, Jude Rogers praised the album's production and Rob Moose's string arrangements, and wrote that Marling's "voice has never been better, each syllable a shining pool of water, clear, vivid and beautiful. The Girl that might be lost, torn from innocence prematurely or unwittingly fragmented by forces that dominate society.”. Album highlight “Blow By Blow” includes the rarest thing of all for the English troubadour: a piano ballad. To celebrate the Australian release of 'Song For Our Daughter' 3 people have the chance to join in a guitar lesson for one of the songs off the album. © 2020 Paste Media Group. “I’ve lived my life in fits and spurts,” Marling sings on “Hope We Meet Again,” but judging by the various events throughout Song For Our Daughter, Alexandra has been through a lot. Song For Our Daughter continues this trend, introducing us to “Alexandra” in the first line of the album. [24][5] Marling herself commented on this, stating she "saw no reason to hold back on something that, at the very least, might entertain, and at its best, provide some sense of union". But Song For Our Daughter also sacrifices the musical variety of its predecessors. It makes for a pleasant and calming listen—which is presumably why Marling pushed the release date from August to early April while we’re all anxiously sheltering in place. [26] The album was released physically (on CD and both standard and marbled vinyl LP) on 10th July 2020.

Halfway through “Held Down,” the lead single from Laura Marling’s surprise-released seventh album, the English singer/songwriter gives a cheeky little hint for anyone considering writing about her: “You sent me your book which I gave half a look / But I just don’t care for and I cannot get through / But you’re writing again and I’m glad, old friend / Now make sure you write me out of where you get to.” It’s an interesting inclusion here, as Marling has made a career out of ever-so-subtly writing about her own personal relationships and breakups, whether they’re about famous exes or not, but cloaking autobiographical details underneath multiple levels of metaphor or imagery. Laura Marling has described her seventh solo album as a kind of conceptual work.