FELT “IT LIKE WE’D PULLED SOMETHING OFF.”
explains to DORIAN LYNSKEY how she captured the “euphoria of congregation”, online.
LAURA MARLING’s world tour barely got off the ground. After just five dates in Australia, she got out of New Zealand the day before the borders were closed in March. Back home in north London, her calendar wiped clean by Covid-19, she decided to bring forward her seventh album, Song For Our Daughter, from August to April. “I’d been sitting on it for nearly two years so I was sick of it already,” she says. But how to promote it?
“I definitely wouldn’t be doing any performances from home because I think they look naff and I don’t want people to experience my music in that way.
So a discussion began about what is not naff. What circumstances does it take to put you in the mindset of an event?”
Her manager suggested two ticketed livestreamed shows (one for European fans, one for the US) at Islington’s Union Chapel, her local venue, on June 6. Several artists have since streamed venue-based shows, whether in real time (Sleaford Mods at the 100 Club) or pre-recorded (Fontaines D.C. at Dublin’s Kilmainham Gaol), but Marling was an early adopter, just days after the UK’s full lockdown was lifted. “I was on the frontline,” she jokes. “It was just exciting to be out of the house.”
It was a strange experience. Marling’s 30-strong sound and video crew were all masked and, except for her gloved guitar tech, socially distanced. When she finished her first song, a 12-minute version of 2013’s Take The Night Off, the absence of applause was unnerving. “It was a nail-biting experience before,” she says. “Is the stream going to work? Is it going to look good enough? Am I going to faint? It felt like we’d pulled something off. I didn’t humiliate myself.” Marling later performed with 22 musicians at the BBC Proms in September and is now pondering how to compensate for the loss of “the euphoria of congregation” with a more theatrical presentation. “You can only do that once. It wasn’t a huge financial success, to say the least, but I think there is a way to do different things and to take them much further, like Stop Making Sense. You’re not watching something that’s lacking an audience; you’re watching something that was made for a home experience.” She admires Idiot Prayer, the solo concert movie that Nick Cave recorded at Alexandra Palace in June and has since released in cinemas, with an accompanying live album. “I thought it was beautiful. It had real gravitas to it. He’s hugely aesthetic in a way that I’m not and I found that satisfying.”
While many artists are selling tickets for 2021, Marling doesn’t expect to tour again until 2022.
“I don’t know how people are booking shows that are so clearly, to me, going to be cancelled. I admire the optimism but I’m not that way wired. I don’t think until there’s a vaccine there’s a responsible way of putting on a show.” The Van Morrison-pioneered compromise of socially distanced concerts does not appeal. “You don’t want to hear 20 people clapping.”
With the release of the second album by LUMP, her duo with Tunng’s Mike Lindsay, indefinitely postponed, Marling has spent much of 2020 bunkered down in her home studio. “I was hoping this album would allow Laura Marling to rest for a bit and LUMP to take over, but I don’t think that’s going to be the case now,” she says with melancholy. “It is a sad time for music. I’ve been blessed with an occupation.” Has making music filled the void?
“The void was still there, but I could somewhat keep it at bay.”
“I DON’T THINK UNTIL THERE’S A VACCINE THERE’S A RESPONSIBLE WAY OF PUTTING ON A SHOW. ”