HP and LM

Just got home from London - I'm now lying on my bed, reading harry potter.

I'm feeling a bit of h pottz this evening.

Alsoooo I am..

..listening to the new laura marling album, 'I speak because I can',

which I bought as soon as I could when it was released.

She's made the transition from a bleach-blonde pixie cut to brunette bob.

So I guess she's a woman now?

Frivolity has been set aside - it's time for that Let's-Get-Serious second album.

Laura's been making folk in a style far more mature than her years since she was a teenager - in fact, she started out playing in The Bosun's Locker, Fulham - a teeny venue-cum-underage drinking den (as Barry Nicolson so eloquently put it) that was run by dear Winston from Mumford & Sons - when she was a wee scrap of a lass. All the other lads of this establishment - a mess of jamming london folksters who are now better known as Noah and the Whale and Mumford & Sons - were about 17, whilst little Laura was a good few years younger.

Her first album, 'alas I cannot swim', was one of my favourite from 2008.

From what I have heard, 'I speak...' has lost none of Laura's charm, but she has shaken off some of the timid little girliness, which, I suppose, was what we were all expecting when her hair changed. Hair can tell us a lot, eh...

Aaand is that the telling strum of banjo I can hear, Laura?

Miss Marling is now to be seen on the arm of Marcus Mumford,

cue a folkmance-induced *awww* from anyone that cares.

The Sons have been doing some backing for her on most tracks in this new album, and, being a Mumford obsessive, I love this new country twinge. She needed this, I reckon; it's still acoustic music, yet now it is a bit stronger, a bit more robust.

Anyway. It's lovely. Here's one for y'all.