THE ADAM BUXTON PODCAST - EP.122 - LAURA MARLING

Episode Date: May 10, 2020

Adam enjoys a remote ramble with British musician Laura Marling who also plays three songs - Fortune, The End Of The Affair and Song For Our Daughter - from her latest album. Thanks to Séamus Murphy-Mitchell for production support and to Anneka Myson for additional editing.RELATED LINKSTHE SAMARITANS: DONATE OR CALLPIETA HOUSE (IRELAND): DONATE OR CONTACTADAM BUXTON'S RAMBLE BOOK (AUDIO BOOK AT AUDIBLE) LAURA'S ISOLATION GUITAR TUTORIALS (2020, YOUTUBE)LAURA'S GUITAR HEROES PLAYLIST (2020, SPOTIFY)LAURA MARLING LIVE ON KEXP (2017)ANTHONY FANTANO REVIEW OF 'SONG FOR OUR DAUGHTER (2020)LAURA'S PODCAST - REVERSAL OF THE MUSE (2016)SAM LIDDICOTT ON LAURA MARLING (2019)NEIL YOUNG - BBC CONCERT (INCLUDING DANCE, DANCE, DANCE) (1971) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I added one more podcast to the giant podcast bin Now you have plucked that podcast out and started listening I took my microphone and found some human folk Then I recorded all the noises while we spoke My name is Adam Buxton, I'm a man I want you to enjoy this, that's the plan. Hey, how you doing, podcats? Adam Buxton here. Out on my exercise walk with my dog friend Rosie.

During week seven of the UK lockdown. How are you doing? Not too bad, I hope. It's cold out here. I've got my woolly hat on. A few days ago it was shorts weather. Now it is big coat and woolly hat weather. Oh well, apparently things could be worse. Oh well. Apparently things could be worse. Rosie! We're going to go this way. So look, I'm not going to waffle on too much at the top here. Let me tell you about my guest for podcast number 122. The British singer and songwriter Laura Marling.

Laura facts. Laura is 30 years old as I speak. She released her first album, Alas I Cannot Swim, in 2008 and has since released five more solo LPs and one under the name Lump with Mike Lindsay of the band Tung. Her latest solo record was released in April of this year, 2020, and is called Song for Our Daughter. It was produced by Laura, along with her long-time collaborator, Ethan Johns. Apparently, Ethan's dad was a producer too, so that's nice that someone in the family has finally had some success twiddling the knobs. That's a little joke, because Ethan's dad produced the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, The Beatles and Bob Dylan, to name but a few. Oh man, it's windy and cold.

My conversation with Laura was recorded remotely and thanks to her technical expertise her recording of her side of the chat as well as the three songs she played from her new album was extremely great and when she sent me through the audio file after our conversation which took place at the beginning of this month, May 2020. I listened back to the songs with my wife and my eldest son in the kitchen after supper that evening. And it was a really great moment. We were just so impressed. And I'm going to say moved as well. We were move-pressed.

I hope you will be too. As far as our actual conversation was concerned, there was a bit of social media chat, a few psychedelic drugs, pros and cons of parenthood, boarding school trauma, mine, not hers, etc. etc. Barely any COVID-related chat, but I did want to say, just before we get into the conversation with Laura, that I was reminded recently about a couple of the many organisations doing important work during the pandemic, whose fundraising efforts have been badly affected by the lockdown, and I just wanted to give them a shout. There's the Samaritans, who still provide support and are listening here at the end of a phone line for people who are feeling desperate or overwhelmed,

whether it's by their circumstances during the lockdown or having been affected in some other way by COVID-19 or maybe for some other reason entirely. The Samaritans are still there and more than usually busy. There's also Pieta House, an organisation in Ireland that, and I quote from their website, provides free therapy to those engaging in self-harm with suicidal ideation or bereaved by suicide.

We rely on the generosity of the public whose donations and fundraising make up over 80% of our income. Please support us. So I'm posting links in the description of this podcast to the sites of the Samaritans and Pieta House, whether you need to call them for help or whether you are able to help them by making a donation that is going to help keep them afloat when they are overstretched and underfunded, like so many other people working to help those affected by this crisis. Anyway, if you can help the Samaritans and Pieta House,

please do. All right, back at the end for a tiny bit more waffle, but right now with Laura Marling. Here we go. Thank you. I'm going to turn my phone to airplane mode. Oh, yes, good idea. So that it doesn't ping. I've been listening to a few lockdown podcasts

and they are constantly interrupted by ping and vrrt, vrrt sounds of modern world. But that's not going to happen now. No one's going to interrupt me. I'm in my nutty room. This is my recording booth here in Castle Buckles. Great. Everyone knows not to disturb me.

Actually, that's bullshit. They often do. But I think they're all in the house and they're all in a bad mood today. So I don't expect anyone to come and visit me. How's the mood at the Marling household? Chateau Marling. It's

pretty good. I had a bit of a rough day yesterday. I got rear-ended. Oh, mate. In a car, obviously. Sure. Yeah. So I've got a bit of whiplash. And the guy drove off. No way.

I just drove right off. Yeah, he did. Rear-end and run. Where were you off to? I was this very good and crucial question at the time. You're aware that there's a lockdown. I was going to pick up groceries for my aunt, who lives by herself and is vulnerable. Okay, allowed.

So I was driving them to Stockwell and I got absolutely screwed over. Oh man. An anonymous guy, yeah. So you're in London, are you? Yeah, I live in Stoke Newington. Oh, lovely Stoke Newington. I used to go out with someone in Stoke Newington and used to hang out in Newington Green a lot Clissold Park and places like that

I've got very happy memories of that part of the world Man, you got rear-ended, that's bad Was it shocking? It was a bit shocking I mean, I'm a bit of a, I'd say a flustery driver at the best of times I mean, I'm a good driver I spent a lot of time driving around the States. Actually, I think I've spent more time in the company of your voice

driving around America than possibly anybody else on the planet. Oh, great, great travel times. That was probably what was protecting you from getting rear-ended. Were you listening to me yesterday when the accident happened? No, I wasn't. There you go. That's exactly what happens your concentration went but that's funny isn't it that you have to cover yourself it's one of those

things that you can't be truly honest about is your driving ability as a person i'm not saying you i'm saying one you know what i mean like you can't just say, oh, yeah, I'm a pretty shit driver, actually. Because driving. Exactly. I'm a liability. I suppose from a practical point of view, you don't want to set yourself up as being someone who may have been responsible for an accident should one occur in the future. Yes. Never apologize. No.

Isn't that what they say? That's right. Yeah. But I find that very hard. I had a small prang once ages ago and I was apologizing all over the shop. It's nicer to be a nice guy sometimes, isn't it? Yeah, I suppose. Unless you spend the next five years in court and lose all your savings.

And so you are not only locked down, but you are also in promotional mode for your new album right yes exactly actually that's been kind of a blessing because i don't have to go anywhere i sort of have control over everything it's quite nice oh do you love control yes there's no point in hiding that one um yeah's not like the driving question. You can be honest about that one. I think that's fair to say. I think that's probably quite obvious to most people who know me, yeah. You're not going to be sued for being a control freak. No, there's a difference between enjoying being in control and being a control freak, I think. and being a control freak, I think.

Yes. I think probably the difference is being able to isolate your sort of paranoid outbursts and take responsibility for them. I'm quite good at knowing, you know, what is my control problem and how that's affecting things. And when things are not under your control, does that make you very anxious? Yes. I've gotten much better at dealing with that as I get older i think are you are you a control yeah yeah i think so okay not that i have

the ability to control things and uh also people won't tolerate it from me that often but i would prefer it and when i'm in situations where I know I don't have control, it does make me anxious. You know, like just being on a plane, things like that. Yes. I used to be very afraid of flying as well in the same way until I sort of gave up the idea that I could have any control over it. It's a nice point to get to. When was the last time you felt, look at me, I'm just letting things happen and I'm not getting stressed out about it? Well, I've had a lot of testing of that this week. Because actually, do you know what's exacerbated that is that it's been the first two weeks of my life that I've been involved

in social media. Ah. Ah, yeah. How do people cope with that anxiety? Well, that's a good question. I'm aware that I crap on about it a lot on my podcast. And so I'm wary of just repeating myself too much on the subject. But I agree with you. I think it is really difficult. Basically, I don't understand how people are able to be across social media and spend a great deal of time on there and maintain a happy and healthy mental existence because I was never able to do it.

I'm too self-conscious. And I suppose for people who are keen to be in control to some degree, that's not very easy. Or you can drive yourself mad by just controlling every tiny little aspect of what you put out. Hmm, I'm going to recommend this book or this album. Is everyone going to approve? What does it say about me? Does it make me seem open-minded and cool and right on and sensitive? I don't know. And then if you don't get the correct response

from the thing you tweeted, it's like, oh, Jesus Christ, what am I going to do about that? They didn't understand what I said at all. They've misunderstood me. They think I'm an arsehole. I'm not an arsehole. I'm great.

How am I going to redress the balance? Anyway, that's what my life on social media was like. I mean, mine's similar. Mine's similar. Yeah, it must be like that. I think, mine's similar. Mine's similar. Yeah. It must be like that. I think someone like you in your position as well, apart from the obvious kind of promotional aspect of it,

what is it that you hope you might get from social media? Well, I'm on it predominantly to promote the album, but I've also been doing guitar lessons. Oh, yeah. On Instagram. That's a great thing to do it's been quite nice because um i don't think i'm a particularly natural entertainer so i didn't think just playing people it feels weird to sit back and play people songs as well so the guitar lessons

have been quite a cozy interaction between people who are you know have got some interest in guitar nerdery tuning nerdery so that's all been fine nothing nothing really bad's happened it's just that you know i see the veneer of social media i've sort of witnessed it from the outside and now i'm in it and i see how you become addicted to the veneer of it you become you so willingly participate in the veneer of social media really quickly and um i don't like it very much it's very sedive, the idea that you can manage how you come across, you know, and you can build an idealized version of yourself online. Is there an extent, this is a great question, I can't believe I just came up with this in my mind,

is there an extent to which you do that in your songs? Are you managing a version of yourself that comes across? Are you managing a version of yourself that comes across? Is the Laura Marling we hear in your music the ideal Laura? Or is it just a sort of expression of whatever, however you were feeling at that time, unmanaged, unvarnished? I think it is. I think it is an unmanaged, unvarnished and sometimes unflattering version of myself.

You know, it's not like an arranged furniture version of myself or a Matisse poster in the background version of myself. Songwriting is the only arena in which I try not to over-control and over-manage the process. Can you give me an example of a song you've written that you feel is, or would it be giving too much away to identify a song that you feel is unflattering or makes you feel vulnerable oh one that makes me feel vulnerable i don't i felt like the whole

my i did an album a couple of years ago and i self-produced it which made me feel vulnerable anyway um and it was called short movie and it was written as a consequence of a very kind of weird lonely sort of psychedelic time in my life. What was the psychedelic aspect of it? I mean, it was the literal psychedelic aspect of it. Psychedelic spun me out in a quite a... What, you had a bad trip or something? No, I never had a bad trip. I just got really into them. And I spent a lot of time with them. And it opened up a lot of questions that had no answers

and now I look back on that time and I think oh you were so in your early 20s and I was sort of late to that game as well the old drug game and it just felt like such a thing everyone had already done and experienced and already had those answers and been to crystal healers and you know it was well trodden ground and i felt a bit stupid for having discovered it late and then it having been this revelation to me were you not frightened about them or were you always so confident in your kind of mental state that you didn't worry about the possible negative effects of taking psychedelics no i was very nervous but i mean i was never i'd never taken drugs before then

oh really nothing at all nothing at all I lived quite a sheltered life but I lived in this I moved into this weird apartment building in Silver Lake in in LA and there was a bunch of hippies who lived there and had lived there for ages and they used to go out into the desert every weekend and you know just take mushrooms until the sun come out so I went with them and I was really nervous and I didn't really know them very well so I couldn't really say anything but then it was like the best experience of my life I couldn't believe it just it totally changed me in a good way what did it show you I was I've always been quite a reserved person and just it totally took away whatever that barrier was and also I laughed from a place that I hadn't laughed from since I was a child.

Is it your bum? It was my bum. Me and my bum. I still laugh from that place quite a bit. If you can call it laughing. That's a nice feeling to suddenly have that, the thing that most of us have to separate us from looking like total pricks. To have that fall away.

How did that manifest itself though when that wall came down? I think maybe as a product of being told, you know, when somebody, when you're a bit younger, isolates something that is specific to you and they praise you for it. My thing was that I was mature and sort of grown up. And people always say, oh, you're so, you know, you're so grown up or whatever. And I think going to move to Los Angeles and totally take myself out of all of my comfort was another kind of manifestation of that. And then as soon as the mushrooms kicked in, I think I just accessed a nine year old that I hadn't, I'd forgotten was there. Or, you know, hadn't felt safe to express.

So it was a nice, it was a really positive experience for me. And do you think your song writing changed after that? I think it went through, I mean, personally, I think it went through a bit of a regression. And then sort of came back. I didn't short movie the album that I wrote around that time. I've never really liked. So I felt like it was I don't know just didn't like it what was your problem with it it just was too whiny whiny it was whiny

for me I don't know I very quickly lost interest in trying to find the answers to those questions and so the album became sort of useless to me um i've got to be mindful of the fact that we only have a limited amount of time and my tendency is always just to shit on in a tangential way and also forget to ask you to play some music i really love the new album laura i have to admit that i wasn't that familiar with your stuff. I've always sort of known about you, but I kind of had you filed. Like naturally, I tend to gravitate towards sort of, I would call it art school pop. You know, slightly tricksy guys fiddling around with things. Bowie, Eno, Talking Heads, that kind of thing.

That's my natural place. Not so much kind of folky music. And if I do listen to that sort of music, then it tends to be, you know, Dylan or stuff that was recorded back in the day. But I've been listening to your stuff a lot recently, knowing that I was going to talk to you. And God, it's great. I've just had the most wonderful time.

And I was listening to the new record and I was crying and it was just wonderful. I went into a whole different space and I could hear influences real or imagined from a lot of people that I love. Joni Mitchell is an obvious one that gets thrown at you a lot, I'm aware. But also Duncan Brown. Have you ever listened to Duncan Brown? No. Oh, man.

There's one, I think the track Fortune on your new record reminds me a lot of him. And by the way, I'm not saying they sound like an homage or a rip-off or anything it just takes me to a similar space uh and lovely warm laurel canyon dappled sunshine place you know yeah um what shall we start with what would you like to let's do fortune then. Oh, okay, great. You took out that money that your mama had saved She told me she kept it for running away Oh my

Fortunes can change You picked up some tricks that you learned on your way You picked up some tricks that you learned on your way For fear you'd be lonely if you never changed Oh my, you lost your faith We landed on rocks and that's partly to blame We wandered the

landscape in this unbearable pain Oh my Your fortune can't change Your fortune can change At least we've agreed that we've wasted our time We'll give up this hope that we'll meet down the line

Better off measured in coffee and wine I think on it fondly now the truth can be told Think on it fondly now the truth can be told Some love is ancient and it lives on in your soul A fortune that never grows old was old You spent all this money that your mama had saved She told me she kept it for running away

Never quite found the right way to say I'm sorry my darling, my mind, it has been changed Release me from this unbearable pain And so ends the story I had hoped to change I had to release us from this unbearable pain And promise we won't come here again Bravo, that was great. It was beautiful. That was lovely.

That was Fortune from Song for Our Daughter. Mm-hmm. Tell me exactly in tiny detail what the song is about. Oh, how did you know? It's my favorite question. You don't have to answer that. But here are some other great, great muso-style questions. Okay.

I was mentioning before certain artists that your music reminds me of, whether they are direct influences or not. I'm aware that you do get asked about some of those people when you do interviews some of the time. We're now in an age, though, where it's very, very difficult to make music that is in any way original sounding pretty much everything has been done as far as i'm aware hip-hop was basically the kind of last more or less original genre even though it relied on so many things from the past

do you feel sort of embattled by that difficulty and doing anything truly original or do you feel happy kind of operating within a musical tradition and you just sort of think oh well sod it i'm not going to kill myself trying to dream up something that no one's ever heard before well is that a question i just said a load of fucking shit there if you can find a question in there somewhere then go for it I'll carve something out of that no it was good well yes I mean I don't like I think I have a slight hang-up about being called a folk musician because I okay I also hate folk music I really um I certainly don't listen to a lot of traditional folk and I really don't listen to any English folk music though what do you think of as folk music then I sort of think of it as a sort of I don't think of

Joni Mitchell as folk music uh-huh you know what I mean um yeah I think of well you're talking more about like I bought you a basket of turnips today that kind of thing who's the guy who um who always claims to have written the Beatles songs? He's got long fingernails. He's in the Dylan documentary. Hello, fact-checking Santa here. The name of the artist Laura was trying to remember was Donovan. I think of him as folk in a way that I don't think of myself belonging to that particular genre.

But maybe that's sort of like because I have a bit of a hang-up about whether I'm cool or not and I've you know never I've never had that confirmed either way so now I'm older I don't care as much I think this album is is the consecration of that because all of the arrangements are just so exactly as they are there's no there's no reinventing the wheel with them. They're just compliments to the song. But I have another band called Lump and all the music's written by a guy called Mike Lindsay. From Tung.

From Tung, exactly. And being part of that, which is very, very different and also not my responsibility totally, has sort of like helped me lean back a bit more into my solo stuff and not worry so much about whether I should be trying to reinvent the wheel or not do you ever look at other artists and think wow you are really trying to be new you know like sometimes you see fairly straight ahead artists who are just trying to do something strange with the way they perform or be very self-consciously

arty or starry or like I'm weird I'm a weird person and you can tell that probably they're not but they've got to do something to make an impression you know what I mean I had to try on yeah I do I do I mean somebody I had a weird experience this year or last year because I left my previous management company and I had to go meet a bunch of new managers and thankfully I found some excellent ones but one manager that I met who he was an amazing manager obviously won't go into detail about him but he said um you know i love your work i love your albums um i just think you should not make another boring laura marling album did he actually say that phrase yeah he said i just think the thing you should do is not make another boring

laura marling album you should um get it together mate excuse me hang. That's the manager at the door there. I did not say boring. I said nice, safe and sweaterish. Sorry, I had to get a package. Have you dropped it in a vat of acid, the package, disinfectant? No, he left it on the floor, but I suppose he must have touched it to do that, I guess. We have to leave it there for three days.

If you touch it before then, see ya. I'm self-isolating for another two years. Yeah, anyway, so he told me not to make another boring Laura Marling album, and he said you should go and listen to the new Bon Iver album as a reference of what's not boring Laura Marling music. Oh, yeah, because he's really changed it up, hasn't he? He's done a very different sounding record to his previous ones. Very different. I couldn't quite get my head around it myself.

It's all sort of electronic-y, mad. I'm going to go for electronic-y mad. of songwriting and it was you know that's just not my area i'm just not i just don't i don't understand that i'm such a lyrics based person it's just not really something for me but on spotify there's these things behind the lyrics essays and someone had written an essay an artist that he'd collaborated with and they said that this bon Iver album was not so much an album as a totem to God. And I was like, that's crazy. How can an album be a totem to God? I don't know, just like a contemporary album. Yeah. I'm just looking up the definition of totem.

Totem is a spirit being, sacred object or symbol that serves as an emblem of a group of people such as a family, clan, lineage or tribe. So he's done the album version of that for God. For God, yeah. That's doable, surely. I mean, whether God is going to receive it and appreciate it is another matter entirely. Do we as earthly beings get to decide what constitutes a totem to God? I don't know.

I also don't know. But if that's what that manager expected from me, he didn't get it. Okay, I'm going to ask you now three questions that my 17-year-old son asked me to ask you. Okay. I said I was talking to you, and he knows his music. He is great. He is across everything. He was telling me, oh, you know, these are the songs you should listen to from Laura,

and he loves a song called I Wish I Was an Eagle or something. What's it called? Once I Was an Eagle. Once I Was an Eagle, yeah I was an eagle. Yeah, he thinks he's like, yeah, it's brilliant. And I said, well, look, I'm talking to her. So give me some questions. And he said, well, what kind of questions are you asking? And I said, don't worry about that. Just ask me any old questions. Don't like do questions that you think you should ask. Anyway, he claims that he came up with these from

nowhere without looking at other interviews even though they sound a lot like questions i've heard in other interviews okay how do you deal with writer's block oh nice um it's not been a huge problem of mine that's a very boring answer but I I sort of don't understand writer's block in that I've never put any pressure on myself to write I never have a deadline so it's just when it's written it's written so I don't know do you go through long periods where nothing is coming I've had periods where nothing comes but I think of those as breathing in periods and breathing out period you know I think sometimes you need to inhale a bunch of stuff so that you can regurgitate it in a different you know comes out however it's going to come out um and you don't get worried in those times you don't think

oh it's gone it's gone I mean I definitely have had that but I've never tried to remedy it by forcing myself to write but then again you know I do lots of weird things in between. Whenever I finish an album, I always feel like I'm never going to put myself through that again. I trained to be a yoga instructor once or, you know, I went traveling around Europe last year. I just, I always think I can't do it again. So it has the effect of distracting my brain so that inevitably I do start writing again. distracting my brain so that inevitably I do start writing again yeah but do you think I can't do that again in a really realistic way so that you start imagining what else you're going to do with your life yeah I sort of have done that since the beginning because it was always such an accident

for me it was just such an accident that I fell into music I was only 17 I always thought well I should definitely have a backup plan and I continue to that. What were you doing when you were 17? I was at school. Well, I was singing backing vocals in a band called No In The Whale. Right. Yeah. And did you go to school with them or something? No, I met Charlie, the lead singer.

We were, you know, teenage sweethearts or whatever. Ah. And that came to an end, as did my time in Knowing the Whale. And he actually produced my first album. I was signed when I was 16, so I was always sort of had that ready to go. So, yeah. That must have been weird, though. How did your parents feel about that?

Were they both around and in your life? They were, yeah. I mean, my dad used to run a recording studio so it wasn't oh i see all together yeah it wasn't that world wasn't really a big uh shock for them and also you know i was really tame i was really tame i still am quite tame there was nothing to be particularly worried about i think yeah but didn't didn't they worry that you would stop being tame and just go totally off the rails as soon as you got the opportunity? No, because they thought you... She's a sensible girl. Yeah, I think my whole thing throughout my whole life has been that I keep my shit together.

Until I took mushrooms in the desert and then I realised I didn't need to do that anymore. But yeah, that was my thing. Wow, 16. Oh my God. I don't think I could spell my whole name when I was 16 so were you always just self-assured do you think as a person I think I was always quite self-assured about songwriting I never had any anxiety about songwriting but I was very very shy and I didn't sort of get the opportunity to develop my social skills I guess until quite late in life I was quite a shy quiet person until I was until I was in my mid-20s I think yeah and the question I think people always ask with people like you then

is how how does it work for a shy person to actually be able to play their music? You would think that writing a song and then playing that song to people is such an exercise in vulnerability that it doesn't square with a shy person. I think there's a couple of different types of being shy. And I think the frustration of being shy, having people quite often project things onto you because you're not talking. Or, you know, when you do dare to talk, people not listening or not feeling like you can put the right sentence together. Or, you know, suddenly you've got this moment to say something. Can you sort of say something that means nothing? I think that was why I wrote songs is because it was like a clear expression of myself in a strange way.

And it continues to be that in a way. I'm not very, oh, I don't feel like I'm very good at sort of articulation in real life. But in my songwriting, it's a real relief. Right. You are studying psychoanalytic theory now. This is one of the things you're doing to occupy yourself in post album world right yeah yes that's right yeah how long have you been doing that i've been doing it a year um this is another thing that social media has made me very self-conscious about because i saw a tweet where somebody added me in a tweet that said um i feel you laura marling i also talk about my masters at any possible opportunity oh my god that's what i feel you, Laura Marling. I also talk about my master's at any possible opportunity. Oh, my God. That's what I feel like. That is such a classic tweet thing. I mean, God, you could analyze that and the motivations of the person that sent that tweet

for ages and ages. And I always just sort of think, come on. For that person sending that tweet, I'm sure they didn't mean anything bad by it they probably thought that you would laugh or it did make me laugh somehow yeah yeah yeah but at the same time it's like just think for a tiny second that maybe that person would take it as a bit of a dig or that it would make them self-conscious or you know what i mean yeah i don't i just i can't imagine what that experience is like

on a much more successful level than mine. I think you just block it out as soon as you start getting followers in the millions or whatever. You just don't read them, surely. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I bet. Anyway, so you're always going on about your masters in psychoanalytic theory, blah, blah, blah, i'm doing psychoanalytic theory look at me i'm great so why why are you doing it is it to satisfy an intellectual curiosity or

do you think it will serve a practical purpose in your life at some point what is it for a start it is the theory of psychoanalysis and its origins and the history of it and and then my interest in it is its sort of application to culture you know a psychoanalytic view on cultural events and i was interested i mean i was a patient of psychoanalysis for for a few years in my early 20s and i found that i really i didn't really know what it was when I went, you know, other than the basics. It had a hugely beneficial effect on me, even though it was insanely expensive. And so it's probably cheaper to just get the master's than to be a full time patient of psychoanalysis. And you became a patient of psychoanalysis after stumbling out of the desert with all your faculties diminished by mushrooms? I did indeed.

I sometimes like listening to podcasts where scientists discuss psychedelic experiences in very dry terms. You know what I mean? Because I think there was at one point a lot of serious research being done about psychedelics and then it stopped. Yeah, a lot of serious research being done about psychedelics and then it stopped yeah a lot about depression right because so many of those things you know you're monkeying around with the chemistry of what ends up producing an emotional state and so it is very seductive the idea that you could sort of engineer various emotional states or at least gain some insight into what causes them and how they can be managed and then of course how things can be managed when it when it all goes wrong and when people become depressed or anxious um and have you found anything of

practical value in the master's degree so far in that respect yeah i found a lot i mean it's funny because i i think about things i'm very devoted to and perhaps this is not the right position to be in but i'm very devoted to psychoanalysis as a concept and whereas it's considered quite an airy fairy non-scientific sort of occult kind of concept to some people i mean mean, I obviously don't think like that. And my sister who lives with me is very, very, very, very devoted to, she reads, she consumes so much kind of neuroscientific literature. And she's very devoted to biological science that you can see data, statistics, facts, how neural pathways work in the brain. And I'm learning this kind of a totally different version that gets to the same conclusion there was a book that came out a couple years ago called um the body holds the score the

body keeps the score by a guy called basil vandercock that's a good name it was about it's a really good name it's about how the body interprets and processes emotions and particularly trauma and the effect of post-traumatic stress in the brain and how it affects memory consolidation. And they've discovered that this thing called rapid eye movement therapy helps patients who can't consolidate these traumatic memories. It helps them consolidate it and therefore digest it and hopefully move on. And psychoanalysis has the same method. It took a weird route to get there, but it understood that there was something so undigestible in an event that you couldn't process it.

It wasn't being taken into the system in the right way and that you needed to somehow encourage the brain to take it in the right way so that you could move past it. And it's just interesting to see the very scientific side and what's considered not so scientific side coming together in that way and do you read about sort of practical drug therapies now with things i'm thinking about people talking about micro dosing with various psychedelics are you interested in all that kind of stuff and do you have friends who do that or do you do that yourself i have yeah on occasion what do you feel that does

for you i don't think of it as medicine and i think it's it is probably for the best that it's not thought of as medicine i take it in the way that you might have a glass of wine for in the morning i guess not not not like um sure i always have a glass of wine in the morning yeah the morning wine it's like that but um i don't know whether this is sort of a socially irresponsible thing to say but say at the moment i'm writing a lot of essays and my experience of taking psychedelics was that the most amazing thing to me was the ability to track thoughts in every direction you could see the origins of them and follow them through to their conclusion and you could track back that was my experience uh-huh god that sounds very interesting um when i'm writing essays and things i'm trying to connect a lot of very difficult things to connect

and try and make them make sense i find that a very small dose of i microdose mushrooms i don't i've never done acid so so i find that part of my brain becomes more available to me i'm able to make these kind of cognitive connections i get that i mean i don't know what the science behind it is and it's very mild it's not it's not um you don't feel it you know you'd feel it as much as having a sip of wine, I think. Right. But you are aware that something has changed. Yeah. And you can feel it changing. But you're not seeing visuals or anything like that. No.

I had an experience recently. Do you know Robert Popper? Yeah. The writer. Yeah. He's weirdly married to my sister's best friend. And I bump into him occasionally at the British library where I go to study well not anymore but he writes Friday night dinner there and I bumped into him and I

had taken a microdose on the way on the bus and it's not something I've anticipate having to chat to people on while experiencing and um he sat down and he hadn't spoken to anyone for six hours and he and he talks at the speed of light at the best of times anyway. And he just went through loads of different subjects all at once. And I felt like for a shy person who gets quite overwhelmed with how to interact with people anyway, I felt a significant increase in my ability to cope with how fast the conversation was moving. Really? And how to respond to it.

Yeah. So this is very good so that's how you deal with robert popper you have to be on drugs robert if you're listening or someone sends you this i love you how are you doing man i miss you uh congratulations on all your success with friday night dinner which is now my daughter's favorite sitcom. Wow. Wow, that's amazing. You're 30 years old, right?

You were 30 earlier this year. I was, yeah. Happy birthday. Thank you. I've got 20 years on you, and I can't help feeling that microdosing is probably not the best thing to add to my menu at this point. Yeah, it's not for everyone.

No, I've never been a psychedelic guy, though. I'm too timid. I'm too easily freaked out. Somebody once said to me, this was when I never took drugs, and I'm not interested in any kind of recreational drugs whatsoever, but somebody once said to me when I was like 19, another songwriter who was supporting me on tour, a bit older than me, and he said,

do you know what, you haven't lived unless you've taken drugs. I remember thinking, that's the lamest thing I think anyone will ever say to me. Yeah. I do think that that is the number one sign of a total dick, someone who would say that. So I would never recommend drugs to anybody. Yeah, I think you've really got to be very careful, and depending on what kind of person you are, it can so easily badly affect you for a long time as well.

Yeah. Hey, what about a bit more music? Are you up for that? Yeah, absolutely. I'll do another one from the album. I wrote down, could you play Two Princes by Spin Doctors? Do you know that song? No. Oh, my God. That's because you're 30. Jesus Christ, I'm old. I was trying to think, like, what's a fairly modern song?

And I came up with Two Princes by the Spin Doctors. But that's from maybe 30 years ago, probably. And then I thought, I kind of think it's something else. And then I thought, We Are Detective by is anything else? And then I thought, We Are Detective by the Thompson Twins. But that's even older. Have you ever even heard We Are Detective by the Thompson Twins? No.

No. Of course you haven't. Or Unbelievable by EMF? You're unbelievable. You're so unbelievable. Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam unbelievable Play that No, sorry What are you going to play?

I'm going to play a song called The End of the Affair Oh yeah, okay I love this one Oh Oh. Oh. Max came around one day Very much nothing to say And so he sat in silence by the road It took a while to land Threw his head into his hands

And said this is too much for men to hold If you were mine If you were mine I'd let you live Your life I'd let you live your life I threw my head into his chest I think we did our best But now we must make good on words to God

And so with a weary breath No need to say the rest I fear that we've been lost here for too long If you were mine If you were mine I'd let you live Your life The end of the affair

I'll try to keep us there Shake hands and say goodnight I love you Goodbye Now let me live My life my life That's beautiful. Thank you, Laura. Thank you. Thanks.

Here's a bad question for you. If you're singing an emotional song, do you think of the feelings when you are singing it? And do you ever get choked up? I do. I do frequently, actually. Again, I'm not to take everything back to this one experience of taking psychedelics, but I didn't cry until I was 25. Just didn't, wasn't a, wasn't a experience. You didn't cry? Well, you never cried? just didn't wasn't it wasn't a you didn't cry well you never cried i never cried i mean i cried when i was a kid and i probably cried when i was a teenager i guess you know early heartbreaks or whatever but something it sounds like you did cry it sounds like you're crying a lot i did i did some crying there was uh right but you didn't cry out of sadness and emotional desolation, though. Yeah, I don't know what was going on. But that well got opened again when I was 25. And I've never stopped since then, pretty much. Take a couple of breaks in the day. But yeah, yeah, quite a lot now.

And so have you ever started crying on stage and had to stop and sort of reset yourself? stage and had to stop and sort of reset yourself no i don't have that i don't have that level of i don't know yeah i'd never i'd never do that but i have you know a tear comes comes to my eye sometimes when i think of some of the sentiments yeah i started to cry during a gig when i was reading from my book and um it was a kind of work in progress show and it caught me completely by surprise I wrote a bit because my book is mainly not sad but there are some sad bits in it it's mainly supposed to be funny you know but mixed in there are some secret sad bits and there was one bit and it's it suddenly hit me it was about my children and I couldn't speak and the audience went really quiet and it was quite awkward

and I just had to sort of move beyond it because the audience don't know what to do. They feel sorry for you and then some of them, I think, feel a bit annoyed or embarrassed for you and it's a very strange moment. They're probably quite moved by it, aren't they? I would imagine so. I think some people were, yeah.

Like afterwards people came up and said they gave me a hug and it was nice. It felt okay afterwards. But at the moment when it starts to happen, it's not a good feeling. It's what we started off by talking about which was that feeling of liking being in control really like most people i guess yeah and then when you when you feel that you no longer have any control especially when you're on stage it's uh

it's like oh very vulnerable yeah yeah this is my worst nightmare and it's happening hello here i am um can i just say that i am halfway through your audio book oh right i am after my crappy day yesterday being rear-ended i listened to it this morning on my walk um it's so lovely adam it's really funny and the bit where you get dropped off at school broke my heart i couldn't believe it nine year old you nine year old you didn't go to boarding school did you i went to a boarding school but i didn't board i was right okay yeah so you've never yeah you never had that experience of uh that separation experience no but i funny enough i just well i was just dipping in and out of a book i haven't read it entirely called wounded leaders about the effect of british boarding, you know, the trauma of being separated and how that affects people who then go on to lead governments and things like that.

Right. I think it is a thing. You know, I'm wary of going on about it too much because, you know, I've had such a fortunate life in so many ways. I really don't have anything to complain about, whatever. And I think most people who have been to boarding school are probably in that sort of position. So they do feel like, well, maybe I shouldn't crap on about this too much. I mean, I don't feel as if I'm too badly screwed up by having gone to boarding school, but it is a weird thing.

You can imagine that some people never recover. I mean, never recover from the inconsistency of being loved by their parents and but also being sent away. You know, it's a very big conflict for a young brain to take in. That's the thing, isn't it? Because because we're talking about very privileged, cozy lives here. We're talking about parents on the whole that probably really do love their children. So you're already lucky. You've already got a head start. You're in a loving family environment and you don't have to worry about a lot of things that many people have to worry about.

But then it's like, oh, suddenly all that gets completely torn away when they just say, oh, yeah, by the way, you're not going to live with us anymore. We're going to put you in expensive prison and we'll only see you once every few months or whatever. It is weird. And it does. The thing is that my parents definitely subscribe to that whole idea of, oh, it'll toughen you up. You know, like they thought, well, it's a nice school, which it was. And so any trauma, they didn't think of it in those terms, I'm sure. But any unpleasantness or sadness will be temporary.

And actually, it'll have a long-term beneficial effect which which is that it'll toughen you up and that's a useful thing because the world is hard and yeah you know this will be a good early experience of shit getting real but i can't i couldn't imagine doing that to my children no the cut and scar technique it a bit not ideal now, is it? No, I don't know. You have a daughter, right? No, I don't have a daughter. You don't have a daughter?

I don't have a daughter, no. I didn't actually read enough about you to establish that you've done an album called Songs for Our Daughter, but you don't actually have a daughter. No, I don't. I apologise. That's all right. Do you think about having children i do i feel hugely ambivalent about it um it's not good for the planet it's not good for the planet and i think i don't know would i be just as happy with the dog it's possible it is possible how do you feel about it well you ask me at a particularly strange time because as we speak

it's week six of the lockdown and after a few weeks of everyone kind of ring a ring of roses having a lovely family time it's gone a bit more challenging in the last couple of weeks my sons are both teenaged and i think the um novelty is very much worn off for them and yeah there's been a couple of uh heated standoffs what about having kids knowing that there's a global pandemic and what if this you know not to go sort of fatalist about it sure what about that side of it uh i worry about all of those things i worry about like what kind of world have we brought our children into why didn't i think more carefully about it before i did it um but the rewards are i mean if you do the maths on it, it's not a good arrangement.

Because the time you spend thinking this is great is much, much less than the time you spend thinking this is a pain in the ass or this is driving me nuts or I'm fucking this up and oh my God, what have I done? And, oh, my God, what have I done? But the times when it is good are so overwhelmingly extraordinary and unlike anything else that it sort of makes it worthwhile. That's the only way I can put it. But, I mean, I do think you could probably argue that it's possible to have those experiences with a dog. Okay, good. Speaking of my children, though, here's another couple of questions from my son.

What's your favourite Neil Young song or one of them? At the moment, it's Dance, Dance, Dance. You heard that song? Which is Dance, Dance, Dance from? It's like a live album, but it's quite a well-known song and it's something about mississippi mud never touched her fingers california sand lies in her hand i can't i can't remember what album it's from but it's brilliant what is your favorite flavor of ice cream oh is that from your son yes ah i like pistachio ice cream do you that's very's very grown up. Did you always like that?

I am very grown up. There you go. That's why people say it. Yes, I think I did because it looked the funnest because it was green and I wasn't falling for bubblegum flavour. I knew that was not

the right way to go. So it's always pistachio. I think I tried pistachio because it was green, as you say, because I thought, oh, look at that. And then it wasio because it was green, as you say, because I thought, oh, look at that.

And then it was disgusting because it was all boring, boring nuts in it. Nutties. Yeah. But now I think I could go back to pistachio. I think my wife will have come back from the supermarket, the lockdown supermarket run with, I hope, I asked her to get like some mini tubs of haagen-dazs yeah are those essential or non-essential i'd say you could wiggle those into essential yeah i've lost track of the are you supposed to still just be doing essential stuff at the supermarket or can you have non-essentials without being told off well people are still allowed to buy booze aren't they that's non-essential i mean if that's considered

essential booze was considered essential at a certain point off licenses were allowed to stay open after other shops because they were considered essential yeah i've seen ice cream shops open right okay yeah stoke newton they won't shut them down uh anyway thank you for answering those questions for my son and thank you to my son for those questions how long are you in sort of uh album promotion mode laura i think i'm coming towards the end of it now it's the most amount of interviews i've ever done i think i we counted that I've done 75 interviews in two weeks, which doesn't actually sound that much, but it was. It did feel like a lot. Was there a moment that just made you very angry?

Did you do any interviews that you really hated? Apart from this one? Oh, there was one awful one. Oh, my God. I already blocked it out of my memory. Well, I was actually looking forward to doing a live radio stream for a radio station I love in America called The Current. It's based in Minneapolis. And every time I've been through Minneapolis, I've gone in and done a session with them. And this time, I don't know what happened, but I had to panic buy all of this gear for doing live broadcast from home.

And I sort of managed to assemble it in a day and get ready to do this thing. And the person came online and I'd never met her before. I usually have generally because I just have done so many album releases. I've usually met the people before and I'd never met her before. And she was clearly very flustered about how any of this technology worked she called me Laura Marlon and introduced my album nothing like the album title and I'd clearly just been thrown in front of this microphone with no backstory no idea who I was or what I was doing there she was really scraping the barrel of things to ask me about and I because there was just no rapport between the two of us I couldn't

think of anything interesting to say and she was just like well tell me about your routine and I was like oh god really do I have to sure that was going to be my next question tell you about my boring routine so I sort of reluctantly went into it and I was like well I'll get up and do yoga you know I'm making sourdough just like everyone else you know every inch of it was making me feel more and more like a twat and and then I said oh and I'm studying so I'm doing again and any opportunity to talk about my master's and she said what are you what are you studying and I said oh psychoanalysis and she said do you think Freud's a quack? And I was like, I was so taken aback by it.

I didn't really know what to say. And I was sort of in some way, I was just, you know, I sort of, am I offended or is this? And I thought, I don't want to bring Freud into this really awkward conversation. And then she asked me if I'd ever been analyzed by someone famous. And I just, I didn't understand the question. It was awful. It was really awful. They've taken, I didn't understand the question. It was awful. It was really awful. They've taken it off the internet.

Thank God. Yeah. Well, sometimes it just doesn't click. Freud though. Massive quack. Now, Laura, you did your own podcast a couple of years ago and it was called Reversal of the Muse. And it was you talking to female artists, music artists, sort of particularly, correct me if I'm wrong,

about the experience of being a woman in a traditionally male-dominated environment, especially in the studio. Yeah. And one of the episodes you did was with Dolly Parton and Emmylou Harris. Yeah. And you prefaced the interview by saying that you thought maybe they were a bit bemused by the idea that it would be weird for a woman to be in that kind of environment. They didn't really, they were like, well, what's the big deal?

I don't really know what you're on about. But that didn't really come across. I thought they engaged with the concept quite well. And it was fun to hear you talking. You sounded really good and relaxed with them. What was that like, though? I mean, their voices, just their voices are so extraordinarily iconic. I know.

I mean, I was so nervous. And then I got introduced as they were doing a press junket day. And I was, you know, let in for 15 minutes and they said, this is Laura from Spotify to, you know, like they got me wrong. I was the wrong person at the wrong time. So they had no understanding or not, not that they would have cared anyway, that I was a musician myself. But yeah, and Dolly, you know, she comes up and introduces herself to you. She's just incredibly, I don't know how you describe it, sort of media trained, but also just incredibly charming. She's just a charm monster.

And so they were very nice. But, you know, Dolly's whole shtick is that I'm not a feminist. I love men, you know, as if they're sort of opposed. But and I kind of respect that because I think she's amazing there's nothing to to to criticize really but it does make it slightly difficult to you know inevitably those experiences must have been difficult for her to navigate but I think my big takeaway from doing that podcast and actually sort of it they were the last interview that I did my big takeaway was actually the most important skill you can

learn I think as say a woman or coming from my experience as a woman is diplomacy because the thing that Dolly Parton is brilliant at is her diplomacy her experiences whatever they may be she's dealt with them in a way that has only ended up being in her to the benefit of her career because she's dealt with them diplomatically. And if the institutional problems are going to remain the institutional problems, or they're going to change at the slow rate that they tend to, then diplomacy is the best thing you can learn.

So that was my sort of conclusion from that podcast series. And I was quite happy with it. I liked it. Yeah, I really enjoyed it. Though the only thing that I found frustrating was that they hadn't heard your music, because I was thinking like, ah, if they knew how good you were, it would be such, maybe it wouldn't be that different a conversation because I'm sure that they were perfectly engaged and respectful with you anyway. But it just would have been fun if they had known how good you are. You know what I mean?

Yeah. That's not for you to say. how good you are you know what i mean yeah that's not for you to say but uh yeah it was weird to be spoken to in that way not that i hold the kind of power that dolly and emmy lou hold but i've so often been on the other side of the table i don't know it was really strange it was quite you know quite a good experience to have i guess but yeah they definitely thought i was you know i was just a random person asking them questions that they couldn't be bothered to answer in detail because they've done it for the last 30 years 40 years whatever yeah exactly and they were very sweet and at the end they just say well good luck with your stuff great you know it was great but look Laura we have to wrap things up

would you mind playing one more song before we say goodbye? Not at all. No. That would be great. What are you thinking? I'll do a song for our daughter. Unless you have any. I'm embarrassed that I assumed that you had children just because your album was called Song for Our Daughter.

I'm a very literal minded person. I'm sorry. You're not the first. Though they may want you to tread in their trail Only to see if the path they said fails Though they may want you to take off your clothes Whatever they think that the action exposes With your clothes on the floor

Taking advice from some old boarding ball Taking advice from some old boarding ball You will ask yourself, did I want this at all? You remember what I said The book I left by your bed The words that some survivor read Lately I've been thinking about our daughter growing old And all of the bullshit that she might be told With his blood on the floor

Maybe now you believe her for sure She remembers what I said The book I left by her bed The words that were some survival read With some survival rest Though they may take you For all you had left You won't be forgotten For what you had not done yet You wished for a kiss from God

And you mourn in your childish loss Innocence gone, but it's not for God You cut your way through it somehow And they remember what you said The book you left by your bed The words that will outlive the dead Wait, this is an advert for Squarespace Every time

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If you build it with Squarespace Just visit squarespace.com slash buxton for a free trial And when you're ready to launch Because you will want to launch use the offer code buxton to save 10 off your first purchase of a website or domain so put the smile of success on your face with squarespace yes continue Yes. Continue. Continue.

Hey, welcome back, podcats. That was Laura Marling. I really enjoyed talking to her and I'm so grateful to her for recording her end of the conversation and those songs so perfectly. Usually in those situations, if I'm talking to someone

and they play a song that beautifully, I'll get home all excited to listen back to it and then realise I didn't actually press record. So it was very nice to have someone else look after that end of things and have it work out so well. So thanks, Laura. Oh man, it's cold out here. I'll just tell you quickly about a few of the links that I've posted in the description of this week's podcast. Links to the Samaritans and Pieta House. First of all, whether you might need their help or whether you can help them with a donation. I have donated myself. I haven't donated myself, but I donated.

Other links. Laura with Full Band playing live on KEXP around the release of Semper Femina, her album from 2017. There's a link to Laura's podcast Reversal of the Muse an exploration of femininity in creativity there's also a link to Neil Young's BBC concert filmed in 1971 and that includes the song Dance Dance Dance

that Laura identified as her current favourite Neil Young song. And I went and looked it up and I'd forgotten about that BBC concert. I think I've seen it before. But God, it's good. He's really on good form. His voice sounds great.

He's playing really well. Out on the weekend, old man. Journey through the past, heart of gold. Don't let it bring you down. Man needs a maid. Love in mind. Dance, dance, dance. I recommend it.

Look, I'm not going to waffle anymore because it is just not sufficiently clement. Thanks very much indeed to Seamus Murphy Mitchell for his always invaluable production support. And thanks to Annika Meissen for her edit work on this episode. Much appreciated, Annika. Oh, what the hell? I am now leaning into the wind. Oh, it's bitey. I'm going to go home and make some tea. Until next time, we bump sound elbows. I hope you're okay. Look after

yourself and others. I'm not going to say stay alert, But remember, I love you. Bye! Bye. Thank you.