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CMU Approved
Approved: Laura Marling – A Creature I Don’t Know
By Aly Barchi | Published on Wednesday 7 September 2011
Precocious folklet Laura Marling is only streaming her new ‘A Creature I Don’t Know’ album in the week leading up to its official release. And you’ll never guess what, it’s well bloody good.
Marling seems to scribe and strum herself closer to utter greatness with each album, and ‘Creature’ is no exception, reading like a dark-folk novella of exquisitely-spun fables, each so sophisticated you wonder how anyone so young could have dreamt it up. Sinister centrepiece ‘The Beast’ has the mystic country grit of last album fare ‘Devil’s Spoke’ amplified a thousand times, while opening song ‘The Muse’ lightens the record’s more malevolent shades with sung-spoken lyrical licks that recall Joni Mitchell at her jazzy best.
To be found elsewhere are the two-part pleasantries of lead single ‘Sophia’, the slight, medieval cant of ‘Rest In The Bed’, and the sparse waltz of ‘Night After Night’, all tied up in a voice that thrives on a storyteller’s cadence, and which flutters through sweet trills and plummets to a throaty hum during its darkest crimson moments. Anyway, I’ve probably gone on about this long enough, please do shut me up by heading over to this here Guardian-hosted stream.
