The New Yorker Radio Hour - Laura Marling, a Briton in Los Angeles

Episode Date: July 7, 2020

The thirty-year-old British singer/songwriter Laura Marling has produced seven albums of dense but delicate folk music, starting when she was only eighteen. After several years touring on the road, she tells John Seabrook, she found herself in Los Angeles. Speaking at The New Yorker Festival in October, 2017, she explained how, growing up, her father played her a lot of Joni Mitchell, and the influence stuck. In Los Angeles, she felt that many of the musicians she had long idolized were still “there in the hills, looking down on the city.” Marling performed her songs “Daisy,” and “The Valley,” accompanying herself on guitar.   This story originally aired January 26, 2018. New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

From One World Trade Center in Manhattan, this is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Laura Marling released her first album when she was 18 years old. But it didn't really feel like the work of someone who had just earned the right to vote. Marling is 30 now, and she's got seven albums under her belt. The most recent just came out in April, and it's called Song for Our Daughter. Though they may want you to tread in their trail Only to see if the path they said fail

Though they may want you to take off your clothes Marling's particular brand of dense but delicate folk music Has earned her the acclaim of so many critics And she's got a lot of passionate fans like John Seabrook She and Seabrook spoke at the New Yorker Festival in 2017 In my work, I meet quite a few artists that are very good singers. Some of those artists are also good players. And a few of those artists are also good songwriters.

But I never meet someone who is as good as you are at each of those categories, any one of which would probably make you a very successful artist. So you're a real artist. Welcome. You're fantastic. Thanks. And Laura and I actually, know each other. We met a couple years ago. We played Boggle together. But anyway, so, Laura,

that was in April of 2015. Talk about what you were doing in California those years. He had three, four great albums, and then you left Britain and went to California. Why? Why? I was touring by myself. So after my fourth record, which was once I was an eagle. Right. I had been touring with a band for eight years, I guess, or seven years, and I was tired of that. Yeah. So I decided to go and tour the States just on my own. I read something you said interesting. You said that because you started so young, and when you start touring and when you go out,

your sort of emotional development is sort of arrested by the nature of touring. Yeah. It's hard to develop as a person. Can you talk a little about what is it about touring that kind of arrests you in terms of development? Well, you basically employ someone to be your parent, you know, full-time carer. That's your tour manager?

Yeah, it's a really thankless job. But, yeah, you know, you are given a schedule every day, you're told where to shower and at what time. Right. And it's very limiting, and it's, you know, it's very claustrophobic. It can be if your mindset begins to make it that way. Right.

It becomes sort of terrifyingly claustrophobic. And that was part of what drove you to California, that wanting to get out of that cycle? Well, I did the tour of the States, and it was, you know, magical and I had a lot of adventures, and then I just landed in L.A., not somewhere I had ever even sort of romanticized in my own. head. Yeah, and I just, I landed there and I stayed there. And I found that really, from the

claustrophobic mindset that I was in, LA was kind of perfect. I mean, the other thing about California with you, and then we were talking a little about this earlier, Laura had a father who loved 60s singer-songwriters, in particular, Neil Young, and one of your very first song. that he taught you was the needle and the damage done, which I think you later recorded with Jack White. Yeah. It's a really great version, by the way. But I think on the Joni Mitchell,

I mean, he actually had you sit and listen as a very young person to Joni Mitchell, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I was asking you earlier, do you think he kind of wanted to make you into Jody Mitchell? Yeah, it's creepy to think. that maybe he did. Because maybe it worked.

Yeah. No, I mean, but anyway, can you talk a little bit about having a father who was a record producer who influenced you musically? Yeah. Well, I mean, he, I was saying earlier, I think Joni Mitchell was the only female songwriter

he could think to put in front of me. I mean, have you felt like Johnny Mitchell has become a musical touchstone for you? I mean, your voice in that middle range up and down sounds somewhat like Johnny Mitchell. Wow, that's very kind. I mean, and you're a brilliant songwriter like Johnny Mitchell, and you're blonde.

And I'm a lady. You're a lady. Yeah, well, I think, you know. And then you went to California. And then I went to California. So I guess that's what I was thinking of. Like, wasn't that part of your California trip? Just to maybe reckon with some of these archetypes that you.

Yeah. kind of grew up with? Yeah, someone was asking me the other day whether I lived in Laurel Canyon when I was down. I was like, no, you can't afford to live in Laurel Canyon. You're kidding me. So as soon as I got there, all of that mysticism was gone. Do you know what I mean?

But there are still the... But there is this mystical thing in L.A. that the old school guys and girls are there. You feel that they're there in the hills looking down on the city. and you hear about, you know, because most of my friends are musicians and they, you know, talk about playing with Jackson Brown at the weekend. You know.

They're like the old fathers up there. Yeah. David Crosby. David Crosby, of course. Like a Buddha. Yeah. That's John Seabrook talking with Laura Marling at the New Yorker Festival in 2017. We'll hear a live performance from Laura Marling in just a moment.

We just heard John Seabrook in conversation with singer-songwriter Laura Marling. Here's Laura Marling with Daisy, off her album, Short Movie. Is he going to change? Is he all right? She's up all. One of the darks when an open home. That you heard her song.

She seems. We're concerned she is immaculately conceived. That's Laura Marling performing at the New Yorker Festival in 2017. Her new album is called Song for Our Daughter. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. And before we go, one more song from Laura Marling. It's called Wild Once. If you grow up listening to a lot of Jenny Mitchell, then you end up having a lot of guitar tunings.

Which is what's happening there. I'm a god. I might be someone's... That was wild once. And I can't forget it. It was wild chasing stones. Water who feels the fire and the child who knows his child who knows his... name they remember that there's something wild and it's something you can't explain

they are wild and they can't forget it they are wild chasing stones can't change it if you don't try but sit down to explain it asking why you are constantly you are wild and you must remember you are wild she sings there's no one on this time is that getting tired and familiar long you must change what hands here give me something to go give me something to go You are wild, I won't forget it. You are wild chasing stones. That's The New Yorker Radio Hour for today.

I'm David Rendell. I want to thank you for joining us, and I hope you'll join us next time. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garbus of Tune Arts, with additional music by Alexis Quadrato.

This episode was produced with help from Rhonda Sherman and David. Ohana. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.