Laura Marling:

Many artists have understandably run away from their releasedates during the pandemic and put their new music back. Not

Laura Marling. She brought her album forward. When you’ve madeyour best record, you don’t want to sit on it, though, do you?Laura Barton dials in to talk yoga, micro-dosing mushrooms,

guitar lessons and love in a time of Covid-19.

Interview Date: 2 April

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Laura Marling, at home in London: “It’s very weird when your life isn’t very much changed in lockdown.”

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playing a show at Terminal West, in the city’smidtown. Instead she is in her studio, in thebasement of her home in north-east London, takingtelephone calls and counting down the hours to thedaily five o’clock government briefing and a niceglass of Côtes du Rhône.

When we first spoke, a month or two ago, shesaid how much she was looking forward to thisNorth American tour; how after an extendedstretch of domestic harmony – sharing a home withher partner, and one of her sisters, she would finallyhave a chance to be alone. There were dates in NewYork, Santa Fe, Los Angeles; the promise of oldfriends, solo cocktails, perhaps the chance to writenew songs. Now all has been postponed until(hopefully) the autumn. Still, she has kept thecalendar alerts for the tour-that-once-was on herphone, and each morning they pop up to tell herwhere she might’ve been. “It’s tragic,” she laughs.“I was devastated not to be able to tour. But that’ssmall fry now.”

The months to come are not unfolding quite asMarling imagined. In August, she was due to releaseher seventh solo album, Song For Our Daughter,a sublimely melodic record co-produced by Marlingherself and inspired by Paul McCartney, MichaelMcDonald, Leonard Cohen’s Alexandra Leaving,“a desire to not indulge so much in the tragicfeminine” and “the idea you could arm the nextgeneration in a way that you weren’t armed.”Instead she made the decision to bring the album’srelease forward, to early April, unleashing hernew songs upon a world locked down, bewilderedand in the absence of a Prime Minister, apparentlyled instead by Joe Wicks.

Where were you when you realised thatcoronavirus was a serious thing?Well, me and my partner, George, we were inNew Zealand and Australia two weeks ago. I did afestival in New Zealand. We missed the mandatoryquarantine that kicked in the day after we arrived,and we just had to get on a flight that day and comehome, so it suddenly felt quite real. We did atransfer in Hong Kong, which was absolutely fullof people, and we had masks and everything,and everyone was taking it quite seriously there.It was a bit odd.Since lockdown descended you’ve begun aseries of live guitar tutorials on Instagram…I felt quite strongly that I wanted to do somethingfor my hardcores. And that’s been actually reallynice. I’ve been so reluctant with social media. I just

felt like I didn’t have anything to share really.I share enough. And I think you can get suckedinto it, especially if you’re selling something. I don’treally like explicit transactions like that. And nowall of that seems out of the window, because allof that pretension is useless. Now it’s not atransaction, it’s an exchange with people whowon’t be able to come to the shows. So it makesmore sense to me somehow.

For the first one, I did a DADF#AD tuning andtaught Daisy and Rambling Man. Everybody wasvery good at playing. It was fantastic. So I’m doingthem twice a week now, on Thursdays and Sundays.

The first one I didn’t do any preparation, I justpressed go and that was it. And now I’m trying to

This evening Laura Marling should be in Atlanta,

“This is so close to my real life.

The only difference is notseeing friends up-close. But I think I coulddo it for quitea long time.”

“The live guitar tutorials on Instagram? I’ve felt quite strongly that I’ve wanted to do something for my hardcores.”

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from my birthday [Marling turned30 in February],maybe we’ll drink one of them. Maybe I’ll teach oneof the songs or something.You mention how long the album has beenready. The closer you get to the record beingout in the world, how differently do you feelabout the songs?Well, it’s funny actually you say that, because Ihadn’t listened to it for a little while, and then I hada last-minute change of running order. It wasactually a suggestion by a friend of mine whosespecialist subject is running orders. He sent me adifferent order and I had to go back and listen to itall again. And so I came up with this amalgamationof his order and mine. I went on my daily walk and

figure out the right language so I don’t lead people up the garden path, or confuse them further than they need to be confused. I’m trying to be a better teacher.Why did you decide to bring the album release forward?I wrote it so long ago, and it’s done. There’s never any great worry in the Laura Marling World that there is a time to be missed in releasing an album, because it’s not commercial at any time, and it’s not radio-friendly at any time. So I’m sort of in a luxurious position to do that in some ways. It doesn’t really make a difference.How will you be celebrating album release day?We’ve got some bottles of Champagne left over

Forward thinking: Marling’s new album, Song For Our

Daughter, was released early.

LAURA MARLING

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it suddenly made so much more sense to me, that album. Essentially I put all the songs with strings on them in the middle. Because they were one apart each before. And for some reason it made a much more fluid, emotional journey to me. It made a lot more sense. But it still doesn’t make total narrative sense, I don’t think – not that it needed to.Your albums often have a belly to them – something like a suite of songs or one long intense song, such as the opening run in Once I Was An Eagle, or The Beast In A Creature I Don’t Know. Is that the role the string-led tracks fill in this album?Yes, exactly. I feel like the string tracks are this trembling, vulnerable bit in the middle now. And they move me. Because sometimes I’ve listened to it and I’ve been completely unmoved by it. Which was worrying. But the other day I listened to it and it devastated me, in the right way.Is that purely a matter of the new arrangement, or is it also distance from creating them?Yes, it’s that, and I think also listening in the context of this very anxious time.Do you listen to particular kinds of music in anxious times?If I really need a good cry – like a good, wallowing, centre-of-my-own-movie cry, I’ll put on something like Górecki’s music he wrote for the Holocaust, Symphony No. 3. Or a good hardcore opera. Something dramatic.So your summer will feel quite different to a normal working summer. What will you miss most?I mean, so much. Where do you start? I mean… all of it. I’ve got a 13-month old nephew, and I was very much looking forward to a summer in the park with him. And just late evenings outside with everyone drinking rosé. Glastonbury’s gone. Green Man might go. And we were going to play both LUMP and Laura Marling shows in the summer.I know you’ve been working on a second LUMP record [Marling and Mike Lindsay of Tunng’s experimental project]. Will this affect any of that?The LUMP album was always going to be next year, but we were hoping to do little, exciting, small festival shows that people would happen upon rather than know about. Since you returned from New Zealand, how different has day-to-day life in lockdown been for you?It’s very weird when your life isn’t totally or very much changed in lockdown. I haven’t been to the shops for a while, but I go for my daily walk round Springfield Park, which is near our house. That’sabout an hour. So it’s quite a good one. I was quitea step-counting person, a big Fitbit gal – but I didn’thave a Fitbit. And I’ve been doing yoga with my oldyoga instructor, who I did teacher-training with.That’s online, live, in the evenings, because he’sin America. I have to say I hadn’t realised howmuch of my day was taken up with gettingsomewhere. I’d take an hour-and-a-half to walksomewhere rather than get the bus somewhere.And what would all that time spent movingabout give you?That is thinking time, isn’t it? I haven’t, in a meta

way, had that kind of time where you’re semi-distracted by the purpose of where you’re going, but you’re also kind of lost in a train of thought. Last year you began studying for a masters in psychoanalysis. Have you been able to continue your academic work?I’ve been doing my university stuff in the morning, very early in the morning. Which is just reading articles and stuff. Oh God, what was I looking at this morning…? Have you ever read any LauraMulvey? She’s brilliant. She just did a refresher of an article she wrote in the ’70s about film criticism with a feminist bent. So she was talking about[Hitchcock’s] Vertigo, and the male gaze and the female facade. Which is right up my alley. But you won’t be able to attend any lectures or tutorials?We’re having remote lectures. It’s fine. It’s difficult to not have the group conversation, and it’s weird to not be going to the library and having that dedicated section of my day taken for that. But that’s fine. I’m coping with it. I only recently started taking micro doses of mushrooms and I’ve got this amazing routine: I get the bus from Stoke Newington, takes fucking forever, and I go to the British Library. Just to have some proper alone time. Somebody reminded me the other day that I haven’t micro-dosed because I haven’t been going out of the house. So maybe I need to get back on that.Do you have enough mushroom supplies to see you through if lockdown goes on for months?Yeah, I do. Though that’s a good question. The person who sends them to me is a yoga instructor, so I imagine she’s probably still sending themout to people, so that will be fine.Have you been glued to the news?Sort of filtered that out. I listen to the five o’clock Radio 4 broadcast and that’s it, really. I wasn’ttotally brilliant at reading the news anyway. And in an effort to not be on my phone all the time I try to keep it downstairs when I’m working. And then everyone – my sister and my partner, congregate in the kitchen to listen to the broadcast at five. As someone who relishes time alone, how are you handling lockdown in a household of three?It’s actually fine. I’m very lucky I’ve got a studio in the basement and I’m locked in there most of the day, and left to my own devices, which is nice. George is a key worker, so he’s out delivering food to people. But he’s taking that very seriously obviously with gloves and a mask. He’s got a system down – he doesn’t work with anybody so he doesn’t see anybody. It is quite good because George also is

“I only recently started taking micro dosesof mushrooms and I’ve got this amazing

routine: I get the bus from StokeNewington and I go to the British Library.But I haven’t been micro-dosing because

I haven’t been going out of the house.So maybe I need to get back on that.”

“I’m lucky thatI’ve got a studio inthe basement. I’mlocked in theremost of the day.”

LAURA MARLING

ALAMY

taking food for us from restaurants that aren’t going to use them. How have you been keeping up social contact?My other sister lives on the next street and we were going to see her and stand at the door, but now I think people would frown at us for doing that. So lots of Zooming. Lots of cocktail-hour Zooming.What’s your Zoom cocktail?I like a gin-ton myself.Any Zoom dance parties?I did, I got invited to one. And I was as shy at that as

I would be at a normal party. I’ve sort of surprised myself with Zoom, but I feel like that’s died down a bit now. And I’ve put an absolute maximum of four people on one Zoom at a time. How long do you think you could actually continue on lockdown without losing your marbles?I mean, this is so close to my real life. The only difference is not seeing friends up-close. But I think I could do it for quite a long time. I wouldn’t want to, but I don’t think I’d go crazy.

Isolation Choice CutsMusic: I’ve been listening to that Ethiopian pianist nun, Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèboru. It’s just beautiful piano music in a scale that no one else had ever thought to play it in.

Screen: I have been watching Seinfeld from the beginning. I never watched it the first time round, but I remember bits and bobs. And it’s aged quite well. Larry David has kept that humour alive. I didn’t really understand the Kramer character – people bursting into rooms – but now, of course, I get it.

Book: I read Celia Paul’s biography. She was one of Lucian Freud’s women and an artist in her own right. She’s written this book about surviving his passion, and what it made of her and how she became more autonomous because of it. It’s brilliant, actually.

Website: I’ve been trying to be good and read The New Yorker – I’ve got a subscription that sometimes gets forgotten about. And there was a very good article with Judith Butler recently about collective grief and public mourning. It’s very timely, I guess.

Podcast: I was very happy to see the Adam Buxton podcast come back this week. I listened to so much Adam & Joe when I was first travelling round the States, so that humour is like a brother or a family friend. I loved all the Louis Theroux ones, but also the one he did with that female

academic, Diana Fleischman. I thought she was brilliant.

Recipe: Just like every other person in Stoke Newington, I’ve been making sourdough. I’m not an

expert by any means – they’re pretty sad, flat affairs, but they’re pretty edible if you toast them. My engineer gave me a starter when we were making the record. I recorded in Wales and transported it back to London.

Isolation top tip: I’d say getting dressed. You’ve just got to get dressed, haven’t you? I’m wearing a pair of old Levi’s and a cashmere jumper. It’s stagnated my wardrobe in quite a major way – that I like, actually, because I’m doing much less washing.

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