Oh to be a 20 year old female folk musician who is hanging out with her mates in Mystery Jets when she’s not being fawned over by the weekend supplements from broadsheets! Downsides would include having to put up with the thought of creepy faux-journalist types like me endlessly trawling through Google Image searches to leer at you. There’s also the huge pressures and expectations which rest on a second album (she should be more worried about me).

The expectations for I Speak Because I Can (I’m going to try and ignore its title) are high and understandably so due to her relatively impressive debut which came in the form of Alas I Cannot Swim. Her debut was held together and excelled mainly due to her exceptional voice and the jaunty and interesting instrumental arrangements. In some areas the album also fell flat in its pretty face. Trite and strained lyrical content combined with all-too-similar filler tracks proved to be its main stumbling blocks. The previous two sentences give me full license to be clichéd and deem it a “mixed bag”. I Speak Because I Can is, comparatively, a departure.
 

Unfortunately, most of these departures have a negative impact. The often hooky arrangements from her debut are gone and in their place lies an extra emphasis on her folk roots with layered guitar coming to the fore in highly unoriginal lulls and peaks. Although Marling is undoubtedly capable of producing a well structured song with memorable twists and turns, it just doesn’t seem like she can, at this point, do either outside of her “young folk lady with a guitar” genre conventions. She is currently at the higher end of the spectrum of vegetarians who want to be Joni Mitchell.

Seeing as Marling is a talented musician, the album isn’t all bad. Devil’s Spoke and Rambling Man offer the two high points of the album, and the fact that the album is obviously a conscious attempt at moving into different territory is in itself an inherently good thing. To put that into context, Coldplay are (so they say/better fucking well be) calling it quits after their next album because they lack this precise inclination and ability.

Breaking new ground for Marling has led to two interesting revelations, in my humble etc; she’s found an extra dimension to her voice, one with authority and strength that doesn’t sacrifice the vocal range she had already established. On top of this, she seems to have sorted out her nasty habit of writing naff lyrics. They’re still not great lyrics but they don’t make me cringe and also remain thematically consistent. Lots of critics, hacks and people like me are attributing this to her maturing. Personally, I would simply attribute it to her just generally improving. It’s not as if the two are synonymous – just look at Fred Durst.

Buy this album if you’re financing your summer backpacking trip through Southern France by selling handmade jewellery. Otherwise just give Laura Marling a pat on the back, or a medal…or vague adulations of respect for not turning out her first album again. Oh, and for not being inapprehensively shit, that’s an important one.

- Stephen Tuohy