(pair of mirrors)

Laura Marling—”Night After Night”

A Creature I Don’t Know

I’ve been having a really hard time writing this review. I’ve listened to A Creature I Don’t Know over and over and over again, but I don’t know how to talk about it.  I can’t find the words to dissect what I really don’t understand—but its that lack of understanding that has me so head over heels in love with this album. With each new listen comes a new set of questions that I can’t find the answers to. 

Is Laura Marling real? I mean… how can she be so good? With her words? With her guitar? With her voice? She is 21. She looks like she’s 15. She has a voice that sounds like she’s 30 and lyrics that sound like she’s lived 100 years longer than I have. It doesn’t seem possible that a voice so deep… in tone and timbre—and equally in thoughtful lyricism—could come out of such a tiny beautiful person. Or that such tiny fingers could make such elegant sound pour from that guitar. The worst part is how she makes it all look so hopelessly easy.

I grew up on Joni Mitchell so I really enjoy the parallel that everyone keeps drawing between Joni and Laura’s sound. That being said, though I love the similarity that I can hear in their two voices, I find Laura Marling to be a lot darker—a lot more frightening. Laura isn’t writing about the sun pouring in like butterscotch, but rather how her love is driven by rage. 

And you can hear that rage. It is the prettiest, saddest, most heart-wrenching rage. It drips through the quiet lulls and it screams when the strumming guitars build up to their full force. There is so much power in these songs that I find something new to love, or to worry over… with every new listen. I find myself asking again and again, what has Laura Marling seen? What has she experienced? She seems so wise beyond her years. I feel like she knows so much more than I know…and it is as beautiful as it is terrifying. 

Laura Marling is an exceptionally profound and talented musician who’s poetic songwriting will, I predict, resonate with me for a very long time. I can picture my children growing up to I was Just A Card, Sophia and Night After Night,  the same way I grew up to A Case of You and Clouds. Laura Marling is to me what Joni Mitchell is to my mother…and I hope she will be to my children what Joni is to me. 

I had a lot of trouble picking my favourite song from this album, and you have to watch her play live too. Buy the album! Watch her play on YouTube! The woman is a poet & a hero.

-M

He longs for the answers, as all of us must

He longs for the woman who will conquer his lust

He screams in the night, I scream in the day

He weeps in the evening and lies naked and prays

Night after night, day after day

Would you watch my body weaken

My mind drift away