“A fascinating exploration of womanhood by one of the UK’s best songwriters” **** – Q
“This is an exploration of femininity, in its power, mystery and vulnerability, above all, in its mutability” 8/10 Uncut
“The album is a celebration of what it means to be a modern woman” – i-D
Laura Marling is pleased to share the fourth and final preview track from her forthcoming album, Semper Femina, produced by Blake Mills.
Listen to ‘Nothing, Not Nearly’ HERE
The exquisite ‘Nothing, Not Nearly’ follows the recent unveiling of a new single, ‘Next Time’, and two introductory releases, ‘Soothing’ and ‘Wild Fire’, in previewing Laura’s sixth studio album. It is released on 10th March 2017 through her own More Alarming Records/Kobalt Music Recordings/Rhythmethod.
There is a line from Virgil’s epic poem The Aeneid that nearly a decade ago Laura Marling decided to have tattooed on her leg: “Varium et mutabile semper femina” it runs, translating roughly as “A woman is an ever fickle and changeable thing.” Realizing that the line was a little long for the limb, at the very last moment she opted instead for an abbreviation: “Semper femina” she chose: “Always a woman.” It makes a fitting and fascinating title for Marling’s sixth album — an intimate, devoted exploration of femininity and female relationships, and among her finest work to date. Written largely on the tour that followed 2015’s Short Movie and recorded in Los Angeles with production from Blake Mills, it is at once a distinctive and musically compelling collection of songs, run through with Marling’s fierce intelligence; a keen, beautiful and unparalleled take on womanhood.
“I started out writing it as if a man was writing about a woman,” Marling says. “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.”
The songs grew out of what Marling regards as “a masculine time” in her life. “A certain time when I’d sort of gone on this trip of abandoning any sexuality,” she says. “Now in retrospect I was hopped up on the times, but I was living in LA, and LA does have an amazing knack for removing sexuality. I found it quite scary; I was scared of what I perceived to be the disappearance of my feminine side. But it gave me an ability to look at women in a different way and consider how I’d been looked at.”
As well as being able to pre-order the record, in collaboration with Kobalt you can also “pre-save” the record to your Spotify Library. Using new, innovative technology, simply by following a link and signing in with your Spotify login the album will be automatically added to your collection when it’s released.
Pre-save Semper Femina on Spotify here:
