Laura Marling - Semper Femina
Critic Score
Based on 42 reviews
2017 Ratings: #56 / 940
User Score
Based on 440 ratings
2017 Rank: #235
Liked by 19 people
March 10, 2017 / Release Date
LP / Format
Sign In to rate and review

CRITIC REVIEWS

100
musicOMH

This album deals with femininity in a nuanced and honest manner, with Marling never hiding behind a façade of characters or dealing in over-familiar observations. Few songwriters, let alone any still in their mid-20s, are able to illuminate such complex material with this degree of insight and personal experience.

100
The Irish Times

Stylistically, Semper Femina is classic acoustic US female singer-songwriter (Joni Mitchell, Carole King, Laura Nyro) with occasional sniping Bob Dylan and soulful Dusty Springfield inserted for no good reason, perhaps, other than that it sounds perfect.

100
The Independent

When pondering gets this skilled, and this fruitful, the dividends far outweigh the misgivings.

100
NME

It all adds up to the most serene, stylistically varied album Marling has ever created – and that’s surely the point.

100
A.V. Club

In these songs, Marling looks at womanhood and female relationships from various angles and distances, giving the gray areas of these roles and intimacies plenty of breathing room. The result is a record of great affection and fluidity.

90
The 405

With Eagle already standing as one of the peaks of modern folk music, we would not necessarily have expected to hear another knockout record from her, but there’s no denying Semper Femina stands toe-to-toe with her opus. 

90
Clash

‘Semper Femina’ matches Laura Marling’s personal quest to unlock facets of her identity echoing with the wider struggle to clear a space for the feminine voice within society itself. With a triumphant new album it seems that this songwriter has found a room of her own.

90
The Young Folks

Simply put, Semper Femina is an amazing album. It’s gentleness and softness cannot hide the fact that Marling is a master songwriter, making songs that walk a fine line between the simple and the complex, while still never losing that pure tone that permeates the album.

90
No Ripcord

While Marling's lyrics come across as powerful and worldly, it's the conversational tone that makes Semper Femina work so well ... United with the strongest set of songs of her career, she has reached a new peak in a career full of them.

90
Paste

Like a great folksinger, she has created an album of songs whose sounds and sentiments are much weightier than they appear on the surface, providing entry to somewhere much more wondrous and strange and troubling than it first appears.

83
Consequence of Sound

It is a strong, elegant, and self-assured album that, in its creative arrangements and lyrical world building, contains remarkable complexity and depth in terms of both skill and concept.

80
Record Collector

With Semper Femina, Marling is back on more assured ground, largely acoustic, with subtle arrangements and an exquisite use of strings that seem a natural, wholly fitting addition to her ever-expanding palette.

80
Drowned in Sound

She sharpens and delves deeper into her already superb songwriting abilities. Vocally she continues to mature and explore what her voice is capable of.

80
The Arts Desk

Semper Femina blends folk and West Coast rock to be consistently sweet and tuneful.

80
The Sydney Morning Herald

Semper Femina ... has psych folk, some pretty-as pop, Texas-style electric guitar over a slow shuffle and several tracks that draw from the intimate, gently deployed manner of Nick Drake. Her melodies twist the straightforward and her voice is so warm it could reheat Scott Morrison's heart.

80
Spill Magazine
Marling created a beautiful magnum opus full of pointed observations on female friendship. It won’t be the anthem of the women’s marches, and it won’t force any self-proclaimed feminist pop stars to re-examine themselves. It is soothing, like Laura says.
80
Dork
For all the candid moments on ‘Semper Femina’, the mystery that shrouds it feels like the coy singer-songwriter still doesn’t want to reveal quite everything. In every track there is a vulnerability, but Marling is artful in remaining cloaked.
80
The Observer
There’s a new slinkiness to some of these songs.
80
The Telegraph

It is another gem in an already glittering canon.

80
Uncut
This is an exploration of femininity in all its variants; in its power, mystery and vulnerability; above all, in its mutability.
80
Evening Standard

A record that suggests her next decade of songwriting is going to be even more rewarding.

80
The Guardian

There’s ... something punchy and confident about Semper Femina as a whole, an album that’s as big on telling details as it is on big ideas.

80
PopMatters

Listening to Laura Marling’s intimate new release Semper Femina is like falling into a dream. Not the surrealist kind with weird imagery, but the half-awake type where one is aware of the day-dreaming and doesn’t want to break the spell.

80
AllMusic

Having entered the limelight early, the 27-year-old singer/songwriter has now settled into a comfortable groove to on this finely honed career highlight.

80
Under the Radar

Semper Femina is powerful display of Marling's craft and, the album's driving force, love.

80
Exclaim!

There's always more to Marling than the uninitiated might hear at first, and Semper Femina is yet another astounding testament to her talent and the multitudes therein.

80
DIY

At the heart of ‘Semper Femina’s reversed pronouns, dream-dredged imagery, and darker sonic core, Laura Marling crafts yet another hard-to-pin, experimental, statement.

80
The Skinny

Semper Femina continues her decade-long hot streak with another collection of finely wrought vignettes on love, loss, and the empowerment that can be found in both.

80
American Songwriter

Semper Femina is a concise, dynamic statement from the English singer-songwriter, mixing breezy 70’s country-rock melodies with claustrophobic, fingerpicking folk, often on the same song.

80
The Line of Best Fit

She takes her steps up the creative ladder so subtly that it’s difficult to discern the depth of them until you’ve really delved into whichever record is her latest; her development as a writer usually ends up manifesting itself in every song, in different ways but always quietly.

79
GIGsoup

It’s an album that broaches a step along the tentatively expanding path for songwriting by women, for women.

77
Pitchfork

With Semper Femina, Laura Marling uses a broad study of femininity to explore complex relationships between women. The album is filled with beautiful observations on the psychology of friendship.

75
Pretty Much Amazing

If you take one thing away from this review, it’s that you should absolutely listen to “Soothing”, but don’t set your hopes too high for Semper Femina based on its quality. Who knows, though—you might be pleasantly surprised.

70
XS Noize
The themes are engaging and full of clear eyed pragmatism. Marling has certainly continued on her upward trajectory producing another impressive release.
70
Spectrum Culture

Semper Femina gives us an audience with a great talent, a writer and performer who works just outside the confines of the easy-to-place but never crosses into strange for the sake of strange.

70
Rolling Stone

It's a timely set, especially for a Brit who makes the U.S. a part-time home. You can hear the double-life: Nick Drake ghosts "The Valley," while Joni Mitchell remains a touchstone ("Nouel").

70
Slant Magazine

An album that seeks to push folk's innate naturalism into an even more progressive space, eschewing any trace of outmoded roles and stereotypes.

70
Loud and Quiet

Laura Marling is a stupendous talent, don’t get me wrong, and if you’re a fan of that voice then you’ll love this record. ... But I don’t buy that it’s any more than a very good album dashed off on a tour bus, by someone with more energy than her talent can contain.

60
God Is in the TV

Laura Marling‘s Semper Femina has an interesting set of vantage points about women and intriguing lyrics to match.

60
Mojo
Some might find the work's almost wilful-seeming opacity and slight whiff of academia off-putting. Judged on purely musical terms, however, it's a ting of great beauty.
50
The Needle Drop

Laura Marling follows up her relatively bold 2015 album Short Movie with an album that's, more often than not, void of emotion.

depechemode4lif
84

This was a great indie folk album with excellent chamber instrumentation that actually sometimes reminded me of Nico's older work. I also really liked her vocals a lot on this album!

Felix_96
70

7/10

good

Fav tracks: Soothing, The Valley, Don't Pass Me By, Always This Way, Wild Once, Nest Time, Nouel, Nothing Not Nearly

TommyToons
85

Semper Banger

TommyToons
85

Semper Banger

80

Nice

depechemode4lif
84

This was a great indie folk album with excellent chamber instrumentation that actually sometimes reminded me of Nico's older work. I also really liked her vocals a lot on this album!

Purchasing Semper Femina from Amazon helps support Album of the Year. Or consider a donation?


Added on: November 28, 2016