She dyed her hair dark – maybe to match her music.

The young, brilliant Laura Marling.

The formerly tow-headed British singer-songwriter Laura Marling is what I would have aspired to be at 20 years old. Originally a part of the indie folk band Noah and the Whale by 17, and her first solo album Alas I Cannot Swim out at 18, her youth seems to have absolutely no effect on the maturity of her beautifully bitter lyrics and obvious preference for minor tonality.

Basically, I think she’s brilliant.

And seeing her Saturday night just confirmed it. After two amazing opening acts (which I’ll have to describe in detail), Laura stepped out, very unassuming, and picked up a guitar. She’d pulled her newly dyed brown hair up into a bun on the back of her head and didn’t appear to be wearing any makeup, and I couldn’t help but respect her even more. She looked lovely and strong–if not also a little run down as Saturday’s show was the last of the tour–and it reiterated the vulnerability of her music.

Marling’s new album will be released in March, and she included quite a few of those new songs in her line-up, one she described as being based off of an old pagan story where a child was left to raise himself in the woods and turned out to be a “real weirdo.” Of course songs from Alas I Cannot Swim made the cut (namely the title track of that album), and one Neil Young cover that she said her mother used to tell people she wrote, including to her embarrassment, her headmaster at school. “This song is about heroine,” she said of the Young classic “The Needle and the Damage Done.”

There was a lot of quiet laughter and apologies on her part during the show for the fact that she was seriously worn out and catching cold (she shook her head at one point after stumbling over her words and said “someone take me to the vet”) so it seems a little unfair to review just her portion of the show. She played well and her music was as haunting as ever, just as expected. What was so wholly unexpected was the talent and energy present in the band she surrounded herself with.

Pete Roe opened for the openers. I’d heard his name before listening to Laura Marling’s live performances, so it made sense that he would travel with her. This man did not stop impressing throughout the length of the show. After playing his own songs, he joined Nathaniel Rateliff and The Wheel on keys and added a seamless third part to the harmony even though he allegedly had not played with them before last night.

Nathaniel Rateliff, joined by Julie Davis.

God, the harmonies. Maybe that’s something really music-geeky of me to freak out about, but have you ever heard an audience (especially a fairly small audience like one at The Attucks) cheer simply because of a vocal harmony? It was the strangest and most appropriate reaction. Nathaniel’s voice had the low, coarse qualities of M. Ward, a little bit of Brett Dennen, and a random, shockingly clear streak of Michael Buble. I know it sounds crazy. It was.

Speaking of low and clear, Julie Davis played the stand up bass for a large portion of the show, but would set it down and walk up to the front of the stage to sing harmony with Nathaniel for a few songs. This woman with her thick rimmed glasses and her hands clasped in front of her was a powerhouse.

And the best part was, the whole band walked on again after their set to join Laura Marling. No matter how tired she was, the songs she played with the full band had the energy they needed even though she said she’d only toured with them for the past two weeks.

If that’s true, I’d like to see these people after a few months of playing together.