“Twenty-five years/ Nothing to show for it,” sings Laura Marling on Always This Way, continuing the theme of the quarter-life crisis begun on 2015’s fine Short Movie. Marling’s sixth album chafes against the sexist assumptions of Virgil (women are always fickle, goes the full quote of the title) but she gets the tattoo anyway; obviously, Marling also reserves the right to change her mind. There’s a new slinkiness to some of these songs, not least lead track Soothing and its latex-themed video. But the overarching theme is of perspectives – male, female and in-between – and female relationships. Nouel pledges Marling’s service to a muse; The Valley is a languorous song about an inscrutable woman singer whom Marling is trying to figure out. “We love beauty because it needs us to,” she concludes.
