Laura Marling Live at the Olympia Theatre

“Hi, I’m Laura,” was all the introduction needed from the main event, before she launched into an epic 14-minute medley of sorts, including the folk girl power of current album title-track ‘I Was An Eagle’, the angry ‘You Know’ (“Damn all those hippies who stomp empty footed/Upon all what’s good, all what’s pure of the world”) and the reflective ‘Breathe’, barely pausing to draw breath as she segued from one song to the next in a jazz-folk odyssey.
Neither as shy (“I don’t get stage fright any more”) nor as tetchy as previous gigs might have suggested, Marling engages with the audience and proves a drole hostess, making fun of her frequent tuning, before admitting that ‘Alpha Shallows’ was written in Dublin. “It’s not that grey any more,” shouts one punter, referring to the song’s lyrics that “the grey in this city is too much to bear”. “Oh shit,” laughs Marling, fearing she’d offended us.
Recent single ‘Master Hunter’ proved a highlight, as were old favourites ‘Alas, I Cannot Swim’, ‘Ghosts’ and ‘I Speak Because I Can’, which drew huge reactions from the capacity crowd. Marling steadfastly refuses to do encores, but a gorgeous Townes Van Zandt cover, ‘For The Sake Of The Song’, and the haunting ‘Where Can I Go?’ served to end proceedings on a distinctly alt. country twang.
Her pared-back approach proved a little uniformly paced after a while, and some of these skeletal arrangements could have benefited from having a few pounds of musical meat on their bones. Having seen her perform solo and with a full band, this reviewer feels that Marling benefits from not being the entire focus of attention, and her songs, while possibly losing some of their inherent tension, get to exhale a little with the addition of bass and drums. Not so much an uneven as a too even gig, where a little oddity and unpredictability would have brought a welcome change of mood and pace.