Aged just 18 at the outlet of his first album in 2008, the Englishwoman Laura Marling cover their tracks in spite of herself. A nice head of hair blonde dominated peroxidized, a British diction sometimes pronounced, songs that ranged from acoustic pop and folk song to the old, Laura Marling as much by his talent shone clearly through its fragmentation, its immaturity. Two years later, the young woman, (re) turned brown, which has always proclaimed his admiration for Bonnie Prince Billy, you seem almost overly ripe. The result, one imagines, a sensational break sentimental, which fed the entire second album Noah and the Whale, the group of Charlie Fink, his ex disappointed. At 20, Marling sings already in the throes of an oppressive relationship, the rejection of the noise of the city, nostalgia for the countryside, the dream of a secluded retreat, snow. Why not.
So, I speak Because I Can is confined to a sober, clean – guitar, piano, cello – leaving the spotlight to take his singing, delicately veiled. And that is enough to move us or charm us even when the songs lack the melodic grace of the most successful of the disc, as Alpha Shallows, Blackberry Stone or What HE wrote. For if Laura Marling has made serious progress in his writing, the good news is that his best record is still ahead.