Modern folk music, the changing of the seasons, and the stories of the earth
Songs and albums tell some of the stories that punctuate our lives; they are some of the “stories we tell ourselves in order to live” (Joan Didion). For the past four years, the discographies of Laura Marling and Johnny Flynn have marked the turning of the season into autumn, my favourite time of year. As summer comes to a close and dusk settles earlier in the evening, I think of the stories I have told myself through their songs.
In the music of Marling and Flynn, natural environments are not marginal to the human experience, but a central part of it. Animals, plants, rivers, and trees, become part of the telling of our stories. Marling’s I Speak Because I Can, possibly my favourite album of all time, comes to terms with growing into a young woman by invoking history and the natural world. In Marling’s Devil’s Spoke, she evokes historic imagery of witchcraft to come to terms with growing up as a young woman. Flynn’s Shore to Shore, The World to Come, and Song with no Name, Marling’s Blackberry Stone, and their collaboration on The Water, all use natural imagery of animals and plants to tell stories. Marling’s Daisy tells the story of a woman who lives by the docks. The landscape – both human-made and natural – is a crucial aspect of the telling of her story.
The stories of the past inform, shape, and help to tell our own stories in the present. Wild animals, the natural landscape, and the waterways all feel rather permanent. They have always been here and seem as if they always will. The types of animals that feature are also notable; all are those that are very ‘ordinary’, but that feature heavily in our daily lives. Magpies, blackbirds, foxes; they all seem constant and ubiquitous, which makes them the perfect backdrop for telling everyday stories.
Johnny Flynn also wrote the theme song for the BBC series Detectorists. Written and directed by Mackenzie Crook, it follows two metal detectorists, Lance and Andy, as they navigate what lies beneath the land of rural Essex. My favourite sequences are those that make humans feel small against the vastness of nature and history. There are a few scenes that show the trees growing through the centuries, and one showing the Roman burial Lance and Andy perennially search for, featuring a young woman with a hawk whistle that had been unearthed by Lance and Andy in the previous scene. Like the music of Laura Marling and Johnny Flynn, Detectorists shows us that the land is full of stories.
Perhaps my favourite Laura Marling song (rivalled only by Blackberry Stone) tells one of my most thought-about stories: my first term at Durham. Goodbye England (Covered in Snow) will always, for me, be about my snowy winter at St. Mary’s. I remember being very overwhelmed by my first term at university and all the fun that came with it, but the snow felt rather magical. Because of December 2023, like Marling sings, I have never loved England more than when covered in snow. The song is beautifully sung and beautifully written; there’s not a verse that I can’t relate back in some way to that time.
Not all of their songs have such a specific relevance to particular stories of mine. But the way that they connect stories to the landscape provides the perfect backdrop to think about my own stories. In autumn especially, I find it grounding and comforting to think about how the natural world has been here long before us. Just like songs, the company of herons, foxes, fish, and the somewhat haunting magpies, punctuate the stories of our lives, as they have done for the many before us.
Daisy Rought-Oram
