The folk singer's seventh album, a tribute to a figurative character, largely eschews percussion in favour of piercing words. It's a graceful ode to resilience.
Song For Our Daughter is her most measured and mature work, and perhaps the most accessible to those as yet unpersuaded.
With Song For Our Daughter, she joins the ranks of the world’s most extraordinary singer-songwriters.
From the opening strummed chords to the last hummed notes Song for our Daughter is full of Californian haze, making for a gorgeously contemplative experience.
More subtle than her previous works, these new songs are as fragmented and beautiful as stained glass.
Song For Our Daughter is, well, so uncannily, unreasonably and astutely beautiful that it meticulously sets aside every last one of your emotional checks and balances to wrap your core in a firm embrace.
Its this predominant facet of nature and humanity which pulses through Song For Our Daughter; dealing with other humans, listening to cautionary anecdotes, and just surviving in a world that may not always be on your side but at the very least Marling is here to offer a delicate hand of guidance.
With all the understated power of the record, it feels far from unkind. Instead it’s an absolute necessity.
What Song for Our Daughter lacks in experimentation it more than makes up for with its robust songwriting.
At just 36 minutes, it’s her shortest record thus far, but it’s simultaneously Marling’s most straightforward, musically simplistic record to date and her most beautiful release yet. Song For Our Daughter is comforting, serving as a warm blanket for us to hide under during this uneasy historical moment.
Written to an imaginary child about ‘what it is to be a woman in this society’, the singer’s seventh album is alternately intimate, sneering and sad, and lavished with gorgeous melodies.
‘Song For Our Daughter’ is a powerful and resounding success, and re-affirms Marling’s position as one of our most important feminist songwriters.
Song for Our Daughter is a touching recording, and it demonstrates that, no matter the sonic style she chooses to play with, Marling remains at the top of her game.
Song For Our Daughter is a return to what made her so widely admired. These are songs of undoubted depth and longevity that can provide moments of relief and solace to those in need.
Marling finds the right variations on Song For Our Daughter, her sonically intimate seventh album.
That its simply stated statements resonate all the more in a quieter time go to show that Marling’s instincts to deliver this gift to our doorsteps early were perfectly timed.
With Song For Our Daughter, she’s making significant musical changes – adding fullness via a wide range of instruments, and a melodic pop swing, adopting a free-range approach to the possibilities of sound – and extending her conceptual reach.
If Laura Marling's Grammy-nominated standout, Semper Femina, signified a mid-career watershed, her 2020 follow-up, Song for Our Daughter, finds the Londoner moving through a subtler, though equally vital evolution replete with sharpened observations and a gripping sense of vulnerability.
This album is a beautiful addition to Marling’s already glowing catalogue of music.
Her new album, Song For Our Daughter, is the first record she has written away from the road, and the evidence is there in the sometimes homely feel and the dulled theatrical flair.
Song for Our Daughter brims with peaceful reflections that, even though Marling herself is just grazing her 30s, could seem like the work of an artist in their twilight years.
The gentle progression on show within Song For Our Daughter is rather lovely to witness, and plots Marling on an ever-improving trajectory.
Song For Our Daughter is another gorgeous and moving album from one of the UK’s finest songwriters, and the ideal balm for our troubled times. It’s perhaps Marling’s quietest and most cryptic release – one that asks you to spend plenty of time with it.
#3 | / | Drowned in Sound |
#4 | / | God Is In The TV |
#4 | / | Rough Trade |
#4 | / | The Independent |
#6 | / | The Needle Drop |
#7 | / | Double J |
#9 | / | No Ripcord |
#10 | / | Uncut |
#11 | / | GQ [UK] |
#12 | / | Far Out Magazine |