Whatever happened to the female singer-songwriter? Of the myriad ways in which popular music has transformed over the past decade, one of the less reported shifts has been the taming of this archetype. A year ago, writer Jude Rogers posed the question "Where have the angry women gone?" in The Guardian - but aside from that, it feels as though an explicitly cathartic mode of female expression, one that blurred the personal and the political and that came into its own in a variety of permutations in the 1990s, has dissipated almost unnoticed.
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From the riot grrrl movement of the early Nineties to the success of confessional singer-songwriters such as Tori Amos, Sinéad O'Connor, Ani DiFranco and PJ Harvey to the figure of Courtney Love looming over the decade and finally to the massive commercial breakthrough of Alanis Morissette, female catharsis seemed to have become embedded in popular culture.
Fast forward a decade, though, and the landscape couldn't be more different. The model of the 1990s singer-songwriter serves as a template for women whose formative years were soundtracked by them: Bat For Lashes, Florence & The Machine, Joanna Newsom. But the threatening streak is gone: could you imagine any of these successors ripping up a picture of the Pope on live TV, as O'Connor once did, or going all out to discomfit the male gaze as Love and Harvey did, or even getting accused of being man-hating harpies - par for the course for the likes of Amos and Morissette, and a sure sign of the power of their music?
To be fair, it hasn't disappeared by any means; rather, it has been channelled into unexpected genres and locations. Karin Dreijer Andersson, both in her band The Knife and as solo artist Fever Ray, encapsulates the tortured feminine, dragging her aching vocals from icy synths, creaking like ancient wood.
In R&B, Amy Winehouse blended it with that genre's existing cathartic strain to stunning effect. The success of Morissette in particular paved the way for raw confessionalism to become acceptable in mainstream pop, with the likes of Kelly Clarkson and Pink openly wrestling with their demons in song. In the realm of alternative rock and indie, though, catharsis became not just absent but deeply unfashionable, with the default mode - for both genders - becoming a kind of genteel, timorous hand-wringing. Archetypes such as the bohemian art student or the quirky girl could not be any more unthreatening.
On her emergence, Reading folk singer Laura Marling didn't sound as though she would rip anyone's throat out. Alas I Cannot Swim, her 2008 debut, was a collection of distinctly introverted songs; too startlingly mature to be described as quintessentially teenage, but certainly marked by the slight awkwardness of youth and reflecting the diffidence of its title. Yet there were signs even then that Marling would not be long for the juvenilia of bedroom musings: her willingness to do battle with demons on My Manic And I and Night Terror, her exquisite dissection of her own emotions on New Romantic.
It was on Marling's second album, last year's I Speak Because I Can, that she revealed the truly formidable potential of her talent: it was the kind of record whose quality made you excited simultaneously for it in its own right, but also for Marling's entire career to come. This is borne out on its follow-up, A Creature I Don't Know. It was the authority and command over her craft that impressed on I Speak Because I Can, whether in unpicking relationships or in addressing Hera, goddess of women, in songs that dared to be simultaneously high-flown and intimate. In making A Creature I Don't Know, Marling took this a step further, writing and recording demo versions of every song by herself before allowing either her band or producer to hear them: a retreat into isolation that seems to have allowed her to widen the scope of her vision even more.
It is an album that can be unpacked as much or as little as it needs to be. Literary references abound; in interviews, Marling has been ready with a cheat sheet for those so inclined, revealing that the album's title is a nod to Jehanne Wake and various songs were directly inspired by Robertson Davies' Rebel Angels and a biography of John Steinbeck by his wife. It's a cross-pollination that seems to fit in with the preoccupation Marling displays with the condition of being an artist - and therefore the condition of her own self. From this, she draws out recurring motifs of divinity and femininity across the album, as well as a "beast" that appears to shadow her person as she untangles her themes.
This is all set out in opener The Muse: a busy, nervy thing based around circular melodies, jazz piano, restless rhythms and an unstable cello line that sounds quite unlike anything Marling has done before. She casts herself, the artist, as simultaneously predator and beggar. "Don't you be scared of me, I'm nothing but the beast - and I'll call on you when I need to feast," she purrs, before flipping the line around: "You know what I need, why won't you give it me? Must I fall down at your feet and plead?"
The Beast is also the astonishing centrepiece of A Creature I Don't Know, a six-minute epic that gradually morphs from quiet menace into crescendoing incantations. "It's the one I still can't believe I wrote," she has said of a track that appears to possess her wholly; even by the standards she has already set, it feels as though she has plunged a fist deep into herself to extract raw blood and guts. "Tonight he lies with me," Marling repeats at its climax: the titular creature on this record is an elusive one, both part of the singer and distinct from her. It's evidence of Marling's instinctive grasp that ambiguity and opacity are at the core of truly great cathartic art, not spelling every last detail out. "Ever longing to be confused," as she puts it on The Muse, it is the knowledge that confessionalism is freighted with uncertainty and fraught by a desire to hide as well as reveal; in this way, Marling recalls both how PJ Harvey would play smoke and mirrors with her self behind a host of characters and the oblique impenetrability of Tori Amos's songwriting would reflect the difficulty inherent in piecing together a confession. She's also deft at a certain sleight of hand: after you've been drained by The Beast's ferocity, for instance, its successor, the low-key Night After Night might pass you by on the first few listens - in which case, you'd miss Marling thinly muttering raw, revealing lyrics about how her "love is driven by rage". Marling's inscrutability is also reflected in her performance: blood-and-guts frenzy is not how she operates. Even as flailing guitars create a maelstrom of noise around her on The Beast, her voice is steady and focused. The most discomfiting thing about Laura Marling, you realise, is how in control she is at all times.
Her vocal delivery is dry and undemonstrative - increasingly so; we're a long way from the high, clear tones of the indie-folk singer of Alas I Cannot Swim. Frequently on A Creature I Don't Know, she reduces her voice to a low murmur or mutter, almost speaking rather than singing in places: at times, it's as though she's pursing her lips in disapproval, at others as though she's hypnotising herself. It's a brave strategy, to appear to recede from her songs, but it's one that pays off: far from lessening her authority, Marling's understated approach reinforces her iron grip of her subjects.
As, too, does her increasingly ambitious songcraft. It's remarkable to think that this is the same artist whose forte used to be her folk simplicity: A Creature I Don't Know is full of complex, sophisticated song structures that initially make it a less immediate listen than Marling's previous work, but most of which repay the listener handsomely. A dramatic cello-driven bridge ruptures the resigned sigh of Don't Ask Me Why, which segues almost imperceptibly into Salinas, blurring overt confessional into a semi-mythic narrative. Lead single Sophia, meanwhile, switches tack abruptly midway through, lurching into an unexpectedly jaunty traditional folk ditty. Both Sophia and Salinas are illustrative of another theme running through A Creature I Don't Know: that of feminine power. Salinas depicts a community of women - fallen women, Marling implies through outlaw imagery and references to being punished for their sins, but also heroic and Amazonian: "My mother was a saviour, all six foot of bad behaviour, with long, blonde, curly hair down to her thigh." Sophia, meanwhile, is the "goddess of power" already summoned on The Beast; on the cut that bears her name, Marling's declarations that she is a "good woman" sound more sarcastic than subservient.
Ascribing a singular, definitive meaning or argument to A Creature I Don't Know would be a fool's game - as well as missing the point of an album that is as much about the personal meaning it has for its listeners as Marling's authorial intention. But the way in which she tangles up her themes marks her third album as an effective reclamation of transgressive female artistry: one in which attaining divinity necessitates lying with "the beast".
The album concludes with the bare, spontaneous-sounding All My Rage, Marling's voice suddenly foregrounded in the style of her teenage material. "Lead my rage to the sea and sun," she sings clearly, free of complications, as though the catharsis that has preceded it has lifted a burden.
Alex Macpherson is a regular contributor to The Review.
