Though it was written while she was still in her teens, Laura Marling’s 2010 second album I Speak Because I Can was a testament to how much someone with extraordinary talent can grow in just two short years. After her Mercury Prize-nominated debut, Alas I Cannot Swim, it was clear that the folk singer-songwriter had bigger ideas and ambitions for her next move. For starters, she’d got some real heartbreak under her belt, having separated from Noah & The Whale’s Charlie Fink, a musician who produced her debut. She’d also read The Odyssey and was raring to bring in more scholarly references to Greek myths and gods (on “What He Wrote” she gestures to the Greek Goddess Hera; later on the title track she makes elegant work of an Odysseus retelling from his wife Penelope’s perspective). I Speak Because I Can features a quiet sensitivity with a deeper, more robust sound and production than that of her quirky debut. It deals with the emerging questions of womanhood she’d continue to explore for the rest of her career: What does it mean to be a woman? What responsibilities does being one bring? This is evidenced by the regal and timeless ballad, “Hope in the Air,” which she performs like it’s a final salute at the end of life’s battle. “No hope in the air, no hope in the water/Not even for me, your last serving daughter,” she remarks solemnly. On another highlight, the blustery acoustic track “Rambling Man,” she evokes the idea of a traveling man with only his guitar and the open road for company. As she calls out, “Let it always be known that I was who I am,” she positions herself as a female wanderer. Across the album’s tracks, a listener can find the final vestiges of Marling’s participation in the great stomp-clap movement that occurred around 2010 (Mumford & Sons and their acolytes dominated the charts, and indeed Marling’s then-boyfriend Marcus Mumford provides backing vocals on this album). And yet, I Speak Because I Can—and all the mature flair for songwriting it showcases—permanently set Marling apart from the rest of her new folk contemporaries.