So from one faith-filled album to another … Part of the reason of this blog is examining albums that are gathering dust on my hard-drive/shelf/under the bed and pondering why I don’t listen to them. Laura Marling’s “A Creature I Don’t Know” is a perfect example.
I loved, loved, loved her first two albums “Alas I Cannot Swim” and “I Speak Because I Can” yet somehow it feels like this 3rd album faded into the background; I can’t remember hearing much about its release or seeing anyone rave about it at the end of the year.
When I first heard “Sophia” it was premiered on the radio and I was driving out of Glasgow on the way to a Hebridean adventure. It literally gave me goose bumps, it was that good.
However, today is the first day I’ve actually listened to the album the whole way through. Crazy.
And I sort of worry (in the way that you do about artists you love with something close to physical pain) that maybe it’s because it’s not as good as previous efforts. It starts to gain rhythm and momentum and genuine concern at “Sophia” and the last 2 songs have me gripped. Woe.
Although upon listening several times, the album bends its way into my subconscious more and more – it’s definitely not an instant grower, or at least not easily accessible until the last few songs.
There are the songs on this album with high production values, a depth to the music and a variety of instruments and voices: “The Muse”, “I Was Just a Card”, “Salinas” and “Rest in Bed” and then there are the traditional Laura Marling songs, where it’s just her and her guitar and the depth of feeling from her voice “Don’t Ask Me Why”, “My Friends” and “Sophia”.
As well she seems to be carrying a theme of the beast versus the muse through (“The Muse” and “The Beast” are the two songs vying against each other; from “the Beast” “Calling Sophia Goddess of Power, instead I got the beast”) which seems to fade away once we head to the last four tracks. I’m not sure, as well, why she is pleading with the muse in the first track when she’s released three albums in four years…
There are also songs which could easily be about her – “Night after Night” tells of a love that has been lost (perhaps through sickness) and “My Friends” tells of a love that supersedes all friends, previous lovers, family. This could relate to her faith, of course. And then there are the songs which tells stories, in the folk tradition – there is the same world-weary quality of her voice from previous albums which adds such weight to the stories she crafts, particularly on “Salinas”.
“Don’t Ask Me Why” feels like it could be the song of the terrible year that was 2011 – supporting us through recession:
“Those of us who are lost and low
We know how you feel
We know it's not right but it's real
But it's real.”
There doesn’t feel like a lot of development from her last album to this – it’s still brave and interesting and her voice is something different, she sounds like no-one else, and her lyrics are both intricate and delicate things – but it’s not like she has broken out the electronic or dubstep album. Perhaps that is why there hasn’t been a huge amount of fanfare surrounding “A Creature I Don’t Know”. For a while, it felt like an album I didn’t know … but it took some time, and I slowly warmed to it.
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