Laura Marling, Queen Elizabeth Hall, gig review: 'An authoritative, full-hearted and honest performance'

Laura Marling in performance in 2015 (Jeff Barclay/Rex/Shutterstock)

Guy Garvey, Elbow frontman and curator of this year’s Meltdown festival at London’s Southbank Centre, calls Marling “the Big Friendly Giant of British music”. The Nu-folk singer songwriter closes the event this evening with an authoritative, full-hearted and honest performance.

Dressed in denim dungarees and a white flamenco-sleeve blouse, Marling opens with “Rambling Man” and the delicate and conversational number, “Daisy”, and covers Bert Jansch’s “Courting Blues” with grace.

Only speaking to warn us of Kundalini Yoga – “You can get Kundalini syndrome where you have a spontaneous spiritual awakening and an ego split” – there's little room for chat tonight as she zooms through her back catalogue.

Having found fame at the age of 18 with her debut album, Alas, I Cannot Swim, Marling was thrust into the limelight. As part of the nu-folk scene among the likes of Noah & The Whale and Mumford and Sons, she spent the next nine years expressing bare admissions of growing up in the public gaze across her albums.

Suffering a crisis in confidence and abandoning the initial recordings for her fifth album, in 2012 Marling embarked on a soul-searching journey to LA. Since returning to London and releasing the eclectic, acclaimed Short Movie in 2015, Marling now looks to her new album (made with Blake Mills) and has seemingly found an assured sense of self awareness and observational clarity on her path.

“It’s very nice to hear so many of you,” she says, launching her dark and moody vocals on “You Know” and “Breathe”, the latter sung with the heartache of Emmylou Harris.

Marling’s voice has matured beautifully, easing between beautifully tender to gruff and painful while hitting each note perfectly. Not only that, but there’s more defiance and authority than previously heard – from the raw and conversational “What He Wrote” sung with the hardened-melancholy of Bobbie Gentry to a snarling cover of Townes Van Zandt’s boot-stomping “Waitin’ Around to Die.”

“Take the Night Off,” from 2013’s Once I Was An Eagle, is a delicate and airy melody that slips along to the string quartet’s medley, while “Once” and a new musical arrangement of “Devil Spoke” are huge crowd-pleasers.

Following the brilliant “Sophia,” Marling leaves with some salient advice: “Don’t go and lose your minds on Kundalini yoga.”

Tonight proves that Laura Marling’s vocal strength has matured with an unexpected authority, and we are very eager to see what her forthcoming album will offer.