Laura Marling, Shepherd’s Bush Empire, London

Laura Marling pauses, looking sheepish, as the audience begin to laugh. Did the taxi driver know? Was he baiting her? However, to cast Marling into a pigeonhole of bitter, love-scorned whiners would be a disservice to her songwriting, but as her on-stage blushes testify, not entirely inaccurate. Since the early days (and these were really early – she was something silly like 16) of singing about stealing fit girls’ boyfriends, Marling’s brand of ‘old maid whinging’ has evolved into a darker proposition with a brooding, sinister complexion. Where there was once insecurity and awkwardness, there is now strength and menace, yet the dull sheen of anguish remains. She’s 23.

Tonight at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire, she spends the length of her set alone but for her guitar. She begins with the first four songs from her latest album, ‘Once I Was An Eagle’, merging them seamlessly into one. Her voice fills the Empire with little effort, her sharp tongue twisting between sweet melody and tense grumblings. Her guitar simmers continually to provide a hypnotic backdrop. This is Marling at her best – she’s bold, tense yet at ease and entirely unfazed by the audience. Her shy and short manner in conversation allows a voyeur’s excitement when she opens up in song.

She opts for tracks that show off the growth of maturity the last seven years have yielded – ‘Alas, I Cannot Swim’ (the hidden track), ‘I Speak Because I Can’, ‘Sophia’, ‘Alpha Shallows’ – while maintaing a steady energy and flow in the hall. The only downside in the performance is Marling’s tendency to let her voice drift into a unnatural near-country drawl – something she began to adopt on third album ‘A Creature I Don’t Know’. She covers Townes Van Zandt’s ‘For the Sake of the Song’ and though she makes the song her own, her voice moves into impression rather than original.

She ends her set without encore – she’s not one for drama. For the growing complexity of her music, she delivers all with an endearing and accessible simplicity. This lends further to the effectiveness, power and edge of her sound, casting aside any remaining doubt she’s just an old maid whingeing about a lost husband.