Review: Laura Marling plays a rapt Union Transfer

Although only 25, Laura Marling is a veteran performer. Her first album, 2008's

Alas, I Cannot Swim

, came out when she was 18 and established her as a leading voice in Britain's nascent new folk movement. Her densely worded songs, her forceful acoustic guitar playing, and her clear, confident alto voice, caused her to be labeled an "old soul" from the start.

This year's Short Movie is her fifth full-length album, and in some ways it's her most youthful: She's gone electric on several tracks, and the songs are less elliptical and allegorical. At Union Transfer on Saturday night, Marling moved seamlessly from her earliest work (the accusatory "Failure," which she introduced as the first song she ever wrote) to her most recent, and some older songs were reimagined in vivid, electric arrangements.

Playing a Resophonic guitar, she opened with two lengthy set pieces: the continuous suite of "Take the Night Off," "Once I Was An Eagle," "You Know" and "Breathe" that opens her 2013 album Once I Was an Eagle, then the more recent "Howl," "Walk Alone" and "David." The large crowd was rapt and silent, even at Union Transfer's back bar.

Marling moves little as she performs: She stares intently and plays her guitar emphatically, whether she's finger-picking an intricate pattern or hard-strumming in syncopated rhythms. Double-bass player Nick Pini, often playing with a bow, and drummer Matt Ingram, who produced Short Movie, added crucial colors, but the two usually stayed in the background.

"Master Hunter" and "Rambling Man" were tense, taut and loud; "How Can I" and "Sophia" hinted at Marling's debts to Joni Mitchell, but they blossomed with their full-band arrangements.

Marling sings of romantic entanglements, but in relationships she is the eagle, not the dove. They are songs of empowerment and strength. She is an engaging host, telling stories about performing at a Townes Van Zandt tribute in Austin, being intimidated by seeing Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, and her mother's concern about the dress she wore on stage. During a solo acoustic portion of the set, she acknowledged her debt to American roots music with covers of Dolly Parton's "Do I Ever Cross Your Mind" and Jackson C. Frank's folk classic "Blues Run the Game."

Early in the evening, she joined English folk singer and actor Johnny Flynn, whom she said she's known since she was 16, during his set for a pair of songs, including a lively "Tickle Me Pink."

Marika Hackman, in her first appearance in Philly, opened the evening with a brief, enticing set of dark, vivid songs that at times recalled early Marling compositions and included a cover of Joanna Newsom's "18."

Marling doesn't do encores, but she brought Flynn to play some eerie fiddle for her penultimate song, "Worship Me," and then Hackman joined for a communal, rambunctious - and unlikely - version of Steely Dan's "Dirty Work" (They were probably not aware that Steely Dan would be across the river in Camden on Monday night).