Review Summary: She sings like an angel; she writes like a poet of old; she is Laura Marling.
Laura Marling’s latest album, A Creature I Don’t Know, is an honest reflection on the creature closest to her — herself. The album is young British nu-folk artist Laura Marling’s most polished album to date. At the ripe old age of 21, Marling holds three full albums under her belt, and she recently won awards for the Best Solo Artist (NME) and Best Brit Female (Brit Awards). To top it all, her previous two albums, Alas, I Cannot Swim and I Speak Because I Can were both nominated for the Mercury Prize.
But who cares about awards anyway? If you’ve heard Laura Marling, you probably loved her. If you are inclined to listen to her after reading this humble author lose his mind raving over her, you’re in for a treat.
In previous albums, Marling presented masterful songwriting with dusky tunes, weaving deep, earnest emotion and swaying lyrics throughout even her most brief songs. This album is no exception. Her lustrous vocals rise and crash throughout the album, transforming the power of a hurricane to embody the calm of the eye of a storm.
The new album is, in itself, a bit of a tug of war. It plays out Marling’s personal duel between love and hate, desire and lust, power and weakness, certainty and uncertainty, angels and demons, darkness and light, the churning, twisting, dark identity of the beast and the wisdom of Sophia, the goddess of power. A Creature I Don’t Know is introspective rather than confessional. Unique to the album is the fact that she wrote it and practiced it in isolation from the rest of her band before showing it to them. In an interview with the Guardian, she explained that Charlie Fink, the lead singer of Noah and the Whale as well as Marling's ex-boyfriend, produced the first album, Alas I Cannot Swim. She said it’s as much his album as it is hers. In I Speak Because I Can, Marling said that the style of the drumming and bass playing represents the characters who were playing on that album. Marling said, “This time I thought: 'Well, I've got the confidence now, and I know what I want it to sound like, so before anybody else gets their grubby mitts on it, why don't I put my stamp on it?'"
Indeed, it is Marling’s first album that doesn’t incorporate the journey of maturity; rather, the album focuses on where she has left off. The album itself is built around “The Beast,” a song with an odd blues-rock feel reminiscent of a Led Zeppelin song. At first listen, you might think she’s gone in a distinctly country direction. Indeed, the first track on the album, “The Muse,” has a definite country sound with strong banjo twangs at the forefront — that is, until you notice the bluesy piano and drums in the background.
Marling has once again delivered a timeless classic that should not be overlooked by the public. She is simply a joy to listen to, and to hear her story as she matures and see where she is every year is something that most artists cannot offer. She sings like an angel; she writes like a poet of old; she is Laura Marling.
