"I feel very alone," quipped Laura Marling as she grabbed a guitar to settle in for a midset acoustic stretch during Friday night's gig at the Grace Cathedral in San Francisco.
The interior of the Episcopal church made for a sonically stunning but unlikely concert setting, although in her native England, the 22-year-old Marling has made a habit of playing such venues.
"Tuning a guitar in a building like this is really scary," she joked as she prepared for "What He Wrote."
The setting was a looming presence throughout the night. At least 150 feet high, the vaulted ceilings of the cathedral played in integral part in giving a seriousness to the performance.
The performers were as unsure what to make of it as the audience, which did not immediately applaud when Willy Mason, the opening act, took the stage. After introducing himself, Mason muttered, "Oh, wow" as his eyes moved skyward to take in the breadth and scope of the venue.
Later, between songs, Mason joked the padding on the pews was "luxury religion."
When Mason, who played 45 minutes alone, and Marling, who played six of her 15 songs without her four-piece backing band, were isolated on the stage, the cathedral's acoustics were cavernous, the echo of their words hanging on for a second after they were said.
However, in terms of stage presence, it had a magnetizing effect. Marling's solo stretch was intimate, despite what she called a "pretty massive self-indulgence" of playing two new songs unknown to the audience.
"Night After Night," included in her solo act, was a highlight of the night, her solemn strum inviting listeners into, appropriately, a treatise on the role of faith in a romantic relationship: "He longs for the answers all of us must / He longs for the woman who will conquer his lust / He screams in the night, I scream in the day / He weeps in the evening and lies naked and prays."
When Marling's backing band jumped in, they punched up her arrangements with keyboards, banjo, drums, upright bass and more. Marling stumbled a little through "Sophia," a track from last year's A Creature I Don't Know, but recovery gracefully, the band helping the song swell to a rich climax. Together, they turned in a transfixing "Hope in the Air" as well.
Still, the moments went Marling played alone were glorious. Even when she wasn't doing her own material, as a cover of the late Jackson C. Frank's "Blues Run the Game" (top photo) showed, she had the power to captivate the entire audience.
Even without a bona fide American hit and a stubborn refusal to take an encore break "I don't do encores. I feel like I explain myself a lot because I'm terrified people will think I'm rude because I'm English," she dryly jabbed Marling's turn at Grace Cathedral was divine.
Setlist
1. Rambling Man
2. Blackberry Stone
3. Alas I Cannot Swim
4. Rest in the Bed
5. The Muse
6. Hope in the Air
7. What He Wrote (solo)
8. Night After Night (solo)
9. New Song #1 (solo)
10. New Song #2 (solo)
11. Blues Run the Game (solo)
12. Goodbye England (Covered in Snow) (solo)
13. Don't Ask Me Why
14. Sophia
15. I Speak Because I Can