Day 2: "I tried to be a girl who likes to be used, I'm too good for that, there's a mind under this hat"

Laura Marling just released a 7" on Jack White's Third Man Records. She covers Neil Young's The Needle and The Damage Done and Jackson C. Frank's Blues Run The Game (perhaps more well known covered by Nick Drake or Simon & Garfunkel). Like everything else she does it is striking, haunting and mature well beyond her young years.

Her sophomore album "I Speak Because I Can" is a tour de force of folky singer/songwriter. With Mumford & Sons as her backing band she steps away from the indie-pop feel of the debut towards more traditional folk, putting lyrics and vocals front and center. It's an album for winter, an album for solitude. The songs ebb and flows, the band knows when to play up and when to drop out of the song, leaving the sole light on Laura. It's not an album for instant gratification but one that grows with every note played, every word sung, like Cohen, Dylan and Mitchell. Listen with your headphones on, shut off the world and peek into Laura's.