NOT since Kate Bush has a female English singer-songwriter shown so much promise and so much originality at such a young age.

“Promise” is not quite the right word because Marling’s gifts seemed fully formed at 17 on her debut Alas, I Cannot Swim. Now she heads out of her teenage years with I Speak Because I Can, as “cannot” makes way for “can”, and her songs bear a similar confidence.

We have already heard ex-boyfriend Charlie Fink’s side of their split-up story on Noah And The Whale’s sophomore album The First Days Of Spring, but whereas he took up a whole album to exorcise his Blood On The Tracks in Bob Dylan tradition, Laura Marling responds in only one song.

She has other matters on her mind: her development as a young woman; where she fits in as a posh Hampshire country girl with metropolitan experiences; what it means to be English, and what she loves most about our blighted Blighty (the snow, apparently).

The comparisons have been rolled out with Joni Mitchell, Nick Drake, Jane Austen. Suffice to say, aided by her restrained folk band, otherwise employed as Mumford & Sons, she has an incisive, cut-glass way with words and insights beyond her years, and a talent as startling as Mary Margaret O’Hara – and unlike O’Hara and Bush, she will not disappear from sight. A third album will be out later this year.

Chris T-T is another wordsmith with his finger on England’s pulse, and after his trilogy of lo-fi London albums, this spiky folkie protest singer is focusing on more personal themes of career choices, love and the vicissitudes of relationships, rather than his usual street politics. From Nintendo to hating football metaphors, his wit is as off beat as ever, his mood pensive, his gaze introspective. Please discover him.

• Laura Marling plays the Grand Opera House, York, on April 20. Box office: 0844 847 2322.