I’ve started writing this review about eight different ways, each focussing on a different aspect of Laura Marling in order to explain just how strongly I feel about this album, and about this remarkable young woman. But I have to keep starting over because there are so many things I want to put in the first paragraph that the only way I’ll fit all of them in is if the whole review is the first paragraph.
Marling burst on to the scene in 2007 with her debut album Alas, I Cannot Swim, a lovely, rollicking album of pastoral folk that saw her immediately lumped in with Noah & The Whale, Mumford & Sons and the rest of the ‘nu-folk’ bands. Six years on, although those two bands are undeniably bigger drawcards, only one of those songwriters has a claim to being the best songwriter of their generation.
Marling has exhibited extraordinary personal and musical growth over the course of her career, and Eagle (her fourth album in five years) shows just how far she has come. We have witnessed her growing up in front of our eyes, the optimistic, light-hearted folk of her debut giving way to darker, more nuanced examinations of womanhood, of love, of duty, of creativity as Marling gets older and encounters these rites of passage.
Musically, Marling is still of the ‘folk’ genre, but no one label could contain all of her influences. There are songs here (like Master Hunter) with a rambling, loose feel to them, reminiscent of immediately pre-electric Bob Dylan, there are songs that could be Joni Mitchell, or Sandy Denny, or Neil Young. But Marling’s influences have always been more literary than musical, which is why her inspirations aren’t always immediately identifiable. Marling was reading existentialists when writing and recording this record – Camus, Satre, and Russian “miserablists” – and that pessimistic world view comes through on the record.
With Eagle, Marling has created a universe where characters make their own decisions, but will never know if those decisions were the right ones. On Eagle, as in life, all we can do is stand by our choices, hoping that we made the right call but always mindful of greener pastures. Marling gets better with every album, and her last three were all Album of the Year contenders.
BY HUGH ROBERTSON
Best Track: I Was An Eagle
If You Like This You’ll Like: Heart Of Nowhere NOAH AND THE WHALE, Babel MUMFORD & SONS, Time (The Revelator) GILLIAN WELSH.
In A Word: Heavenly
