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"People too often mistake honesty for vulnerability, or openness for weakness. Stripped back just to an acoustic guitar and curtained backdrop, Laura Marling proves her absolute strength tonight. At Bethnal Green&amp;#039;s York Hall - usually a boxing venue, but tonight having the air of a school hall crossed with a Hashbury hangout - the 23-year-old underlines her position as the best singer-songwriter of her generation.  Drawing together tracks from her four studio albums, chucking in a newie and a cover, the one-woman-and-guitar set-up could grow dull, but the sheer force of her performance stops that from happening. Standing in front of a curtained backdrop and dressed in a Woodstocky floor-length dress and denim jacket she loses after a few numbers, she&amp;#039;s got nothing to hide behind. She doesn&amp;#039;t need anything. Sure, there&amp;#039;s nothing in these songs that means they had to be recorded in 2013 rather than 1963, but when they pack this much of an emotional wallop, so what? &amp;#039;What He Wrote&amp;#039;, a double-header of &amp;#039;Ghosts&amp;#039; and &amp;#039;Alas I Cannot Swim&amp;#039; from her debut, &amp;#039;I Was An Eagle&amp;#039; and &amp;#039;Rambling Man&amp;#039;, it&amp;#039;s pointless picking out highlights from this performance. Dylan, Baez, Cohen, Mitchell - the comparisons slip off the tongue terrifyingly easily. And yes, we know how that sounds. Midway through tonight&amp;#039;s set, Laura Marling tells us about her cab journey on the way to her Shepherd&amp;#039;s Bush Empire on the other side of London a day earlier. &amp;quot;Who&amp;#039;s playing?&amp;quot; the cabbie asked. &amp;quot;Me!&amp;quot; Marling replied. Despite three top-five albums and a trio of Mercury nominations, she&amp;#039;s still not exactly a household name.  After she fails to properly describe her music, the driver enquired: &amp;quot;So you&amp;#039;re not one of those soppy singer-songwriters who sings songs about being slighted by a man?&amp;quot; A laugh ripples across the crowd venue. &amp;quot;Noooo!&amp;quot; she apparently mumbled in reply.  It&amp;#039;s possible to reduce Marling&amp;#039;s songs to just that, but it would be to laughably miss the point. Through autobiography and character, Marling uses her soaring/stunning voice and gift for heartbreaking melody to tap into such an essential part of what it is to love, and to be both loved and unloved in return. And she&amp;#039;s only getting better. The full Laura Marling setlist was as follows: &amp;#039;Take the Night Off&amp;#039; &amp;#039;I Was an Eagle&amp;#039; &amp;#039;You Know&amp;#039; &amp;#039;Breathe&amp;#039; &amp;#039;Master Hunter&amp;#039; &amp;#039;One Day Soon&amp;#039; (New Song) &amp;#039;I Speak Because I Can&amp;#039; &amp;#039;Rambling Man&amp;#039; &amp;#039;Alpha Shallows&amp;#039; &amp;#039;What He Wrote&amp;#039; &amp;#039;Goodbye England (Covered in Snow)&amp;#039; &amp;#039;Love Be Brave&amp;#039; &amp;#039;Ghosts&amp;#039; &amp;#039;Alas I Cannot Swim&amp;#039; &amp;#039;Don&amp;#039;t Ask Me Why&amp;#039; &amp;#039;Sophia&amp;#039; &amp;#039;For the Sake of the Song&amp;#039; (Townes Van Zandt cover) &amp;#039;Where Can I Go?&amp;#039;  "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.digitalspy.com/music/live-reviews/news/a521069/laura-marling-at-york-hall-the-best-singer-songwriter-of-her-generation/>