Laura Marling
A Creature I Don’t Know
(Virgin)
There’s folk and there’s folk revival. One means old-timey clothes and too much banjo; the other a staunch focus on voice and songcraft. It’s easy to see which side Laura Marling resides on, despite her well-publicised youth. Still just 21, the English songwriter has released three albums that are wise and world-weary beyond her years. Even with the occasional levity and lilts, she sings with a graveness suiting the either skeletal or bustling music of A Creature I Don’t Know. All the while, Marling turns her pointed lyrical probing into free-flowing, conversational encounters.
Reuniting with producer Ethan Johns after last year’s I Speak Because I Can – which like 2008’s debut Alas I Cannot Swim was duly Mercury Prize-nominated – Marling penned these 10 songs in two months. She demoed all the arrangements herself before bringing them to her band, and the final versions see her voice and mostly acoustic guitar flecked with cello, trumpet, piano, drums and yes, banjo. The album’s title came from a line in Jehanne Wake’s novel Sisters of Fortune, and at least two songs have other literary origins. But just as Marling’s earlier meditations on death somehow came off upbeat, her thoughtful character pieces feel perfectly natural.
Our introduction is ‘The Muse’, a song that nearly distracts from Marling’s wry delivery with its jazzy inflections and interwoven elements. Like the songs that follow, it’s by turns bleak and playful, complicated and light. String and horn flourishes then fill out the skeleton of ‘I Was Just A Card’, a tune bursting with confidence and referencing Australia (“When he took my hand down in AU”). Those songs and ‘Don’t Ask Me Why’ set the tone with sparing yet affecting flourishes, so that even when things grow darker, we know there’s a flash of assurance on the rise.
And so it goes. The bittersweet, John Steinbeck-inspired ‘Salinas’ culminates in distorted guitar, while ‘The Beast’ makes for a stormy electric centrepiece and ‘Rest in the Bed’ has the almost medieval vibe of Gillian Welch and the latest PJ Harvey. The only song without any of Marling’s band, ‘Night After Night’ establishes a close intimacy and talk-like delivery that’s helped earn comparisons to Leonard Cohen’s classic ‘Famous Blue Raincoat’. On the other hand, ‘My Friends’ is dainty by comparison and ‘Sophia’ is so lively and accessible (complete with rock drums) it was an obvious first single. The Welch-ish closer ‘All My Rage’ mingles both approaches, Marling’s voice taking flight even as certain lyrics turn brutal.
With its divine lyrics, lithe vocal twists and organic splay of moods, A Creature I Don’t Know transcends your usual singer-songwriter record. Not just well crafted and dreamily expressed, it’s urgent and frank. This isn’t folk revival: this is folk.
Doug Wallen