March 30, 2015

Laura Marling Just Keeps Getting Better


Laura Marling
Short Movie
Ribbon Music

With her clear, forthright voice and ringing acoustic guitar (not to mention enormous songwriting smarts), Britain’s Laura Marling has always been a bit intimidating, and this stunning fifth album may be her strongest work yet. Short Movie is an extended meditation on the endless tug of war between the fear of loneliness and the desire to be free from the affections and expectations of others. “Is it still okay that I don’t know how to be alone?” she asks in “False Hope,” while “I Feel Your Love” finds her declaring, “You must let me go before I get old / I need to find someone who really wants to be mine,” throwing cold water on romantic clichés with her usual blunt vigor. In “Don’t Let Me Bring You Down,” she exclaims, “Did you think I was fucking around?” Another cut, “Howl,” finds her parting from a lover in far gentler fashion. Short Movie varies its textures with occasional drums and electric guitar, as well as lovely dashes of cello, but Marling’s restless, relentlessly honest songs remain the main attraction. Despite superficial similarities to the young Joni Mitchell, she’s her own amazing creation, and just keeps getting better.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

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And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

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