Laura Marling at Shepherd's Bush Empire

Laura Marling
Nick Mulvey
Shepherd's Bush Empire, 2 October 2013

"When did Shepherd's Bush get so posh?" asks Laura Marling, who used to live around the corner she says and went to many, many shows at the Empire where she's now headlining. "When you left!" a cheeky audience member shouts, joking. "Charming!" Laura says in mock outrage. But really this couldn't be further from the truth, as I came to a realisation tonight that Marling is actually pretty posh herself. Because I first saw her as a meek supporting act back in 2007, where she shyly sat playing her guitar, looking tiny and startlingly young, I felt I knew Marling in the early days of her career and didn't really need to read much about her, just listen to her music (which has admittedly got better and better with each album).
This meant I missed that she was the daughter of a rich baronet who owned a recording studio while she went to £7,000 a term private school. Which is fine in one sense, I wouldn't give up the likes of Radiohead or Nick Drake for anything, popular music isn't just a working class concern after all, but it is a little disappointing that some of her lyrics aren't quite as authentic as I thought they were, not to mention the recent Sunday Times article that revealed, rather sadly, that more than 60 per cent of today's chart acts had gone to public school.

So does Marling deserve her success or is she just another rich girl benefiting from the leg up given to her by her parents' wealth and status? Well, mostly the former because there is no doubt whatsoever that Laura Marling is extremely talented, as evidenced by the show tonight. She also couldn't be more unshowy if she tried, walking quickly on to an almost bare stage on the dot of 9pm and leaving without an encore about an hour and twenty minutes later. Wearing a floor-length completely white prairie-girl dress, with her pale skin and blonde hair, she looks like a ghost from times past. She also looks like the perfect successor to Joni Mitchell, which in many ways she is. She actually tells the story of that striking dress during the show, telling us she found it in a vintage shop in Dublin and when she tried it on it felt so right and meant to be that she "felt like a man trying on women's clothes for the first time". But her elation was short lived when she went to pay and the shop assistant asked her if she was going to a fancy dress party! (Obviously they never saw it on her, because she's absolutely right, it looks pretty perfect on her.)

She begins the show whipping through no less than five of the tracks on her new album, Once I Was An Eagle. The new album has faster, more rhythmic guitar playing than her previous records and I didn't realise it until tonight, but her phrasing is more Dylan-esque than ever. In fact she doesn't even try and hide this influence, even quoting him on the excellent single Master Hunter ("No, no, no, it ain't me babe").

After debuting a new song (seemingly titled One Day Soon), she then goes back to her 2010 album I Speak Because I Can, giving us five songs from that. It's interesting that throughout the show she mostly groups her songs by album, although she only plays two songs from each of two remaining records she groups these together too. It actually works really well, as each album has its own atmosphere, so rather than flitting from slow and sad to manic and angry, she beautifully drifts from each mood bringing us all with her each time.

She introduces Goodbye England (Covered With Snow) as "a song I haven't played in a long time but seems appropriate tonight", since she now lives in L.A. and coming back here has reminded her how much she loves England (although not enough to move back, as one audience member asks), and the following song sounds even more poignant because of this.

After singing I Speak Because I Can, a song about a woman whose husband has left her, she tells a story about how the cabbie bringing her to the venue tonight had no clue who she was but on discovering she was headlining the Empire asked if she one of those singer/songwriters "who write about old maids whose husbands have left them". "I need to change my life," she chuckles. This is not the shy girl I remember from six years ago, here she is comfortably telling stories to an appreciative audience between songs.

Her microphone is set quite high and some songs she actually throws her head back fully as she plays the instrumental parts of the songs. She also has a surprisingly strong voice when she actually sings and I must admit I prefer this than the Dylan-style speak singing she often breaks into, so it is lovely when she sings some of the songs from her debut album before she developed this habit, namely Ghosts and Alas I Cannot Swim, both of which get big roars of approval.

After singing a very sped up version of the Townes Van Zandt classic For The Sake Of The Song (which she says she wishes she had written but I think her treatment of the song takes away its sad beauty), she announces this is the last song and sings one of the sweetest and folksiest songs from the new album, Where Can I Go? And then, like the no-fuss beginning, simply walks from the stage.

The opening act Nick Mulvey, who looks like he should be busking in Camden Town but apparently was one of the founding members of Portico Quartet, turns out to be a fine guitarist, sitting somewhere between Elliott Smith and Nick Drake with his intricate guitar picking. He's certainly pretty enough, with a strong voice and cool influences, to make it and it's hard not to like a chap who makes a fair go covering Gillian Welch, as he does tonight with her song Look At Miss Ohio.