The darkness lifts on Laura Marling’s third album, where she weaves astute self-examination into a country-jazz epic. Monsters and female saviours abound in her lyrics, which confront death, desire, and self-destruction. “Tonight I choose the beast/Tonight he lies with me”, she sings on thrilling, grungy outlier “The Beast”. No matter how dark her lyrics, she always sounds wry and self-possessed and her wonder remains undimmed: “Sophia” rides celestial choral cooing into a joyful hoedown.