6 Music - Music News

Laura Marling's given us some clues about what to expect from hotly anticipated new album I Speak Because I Can.

It's the singer songwriter’s second record and the follow up to her critically acclaimed 2008 debut Alas I Cannot Swim.

Marling has a busy year ahead; apart from her new album, she’s playing the Glastonbury Park Stage and Latitude. The folk artist’s also started work on her third album. It’ll be released later this year - although Marling has remained tight lipped about it.

"We're doing pre-production at the moment. It's taking a form now - I don't really know which one..."

As for her sophomore effort, Laura explained she took a different approach to recording this time round.

"We wanted it to feel like a band album and to do it in an organic way, so we all recorded in the same room, standing next to each other. It was really fun."

The new record was produced by Ethan Johns, who's also worked with Rufus Wainwright and Kings of Leon.
Laura said she wanted to explore themes of female empowerment in her music;

"Whatever I write tends to be something that's floating around my head, so last year I became quite fascinated by women and femininity. So it comes out."

Laura also confessed she looked beyond her personal life for inspiration - she told us some of her lyrics came after she read wartime love letters that were published in a newspaper

"The content of them was so bizarre, a wife writing to her husband describing how she was made 'wooden' by anger that he was leaving. I thought it was such a beautiful way of putting something, being wooden by insecurity or fear or anger."

I Speak Because I Can is released tomorrow.