The iTunes version of
A CREATURE I DON'T KNOW includes
the song FLICKER AND FAIL.
ACIDK can be ordered from Amazon.uk (£7), or (in the US) for $12 from Ribbon Music. In both places there is a SPECIAL EDITION, ($50 in the US - £39 in the UK) which contains the CD album, a DVD including acoustic performance, the "Sophia" music video & a short film, a 12 inch vinyl LP album with an anamorphic picture disk and guitar slide viewer, and a high quality MP3 album download.
According to a report in The Guardian Niki Minaj will duet with Laura Marling. No details are yet available.
Alessi's Ark, who supported Marling on her US tour, is Alessi Laurent-Marke, born in the same year as Laura Marling but 149 days later. She called herself Alessi's Ark to avoid being confused with the Alessi Brothers. On 25 April she released her second album Time Travel.
ADELE told BBC NEWSBEAT that I SPEAK BECAUSE I CAN is her favourite album of the year. she said this about Marling:
"I'm such a fan of Laura Marling and always was before she even released her first album. She just gets better. She leaves me wanting more and I'm always really curious about her songs. Sometimes I can relate to them but sometimes I don't understand. She constantly leaves me curious. That's what I like in an artist. She really sticks to her guns."
EllieMakesMusic, who has many covers of Marling songs on YouTube, has posted this how-to video on Marling's song MY FRIENDS.
Upon close examination of the stop motion animated video for Marling's cover of "The Needle and the Damage Done" you will notice the 1980 album "In the Saddle" by the obscure but great New Orleans soul jazz singer Betty Harris.
Photographer Jason Lucas of Chillicothe, Ohio has published a book of photos entitled "all of this can be broken". The title was inspired by the Laura Marling song DEVIL'S SPOKE. The book is available on Amazon for $34.99.
In a brief interview with FAULT MAGAZINE, things about Marling were revealed. Her favourite artist is photographer Nan Goldin; she has no favourite fashion designer; her all-time favourite film is LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL (I'm assuming she means the 1997 Italian film that won three Oscars. There are at least six films with that title.), and she considers her worst habit to be Marmite.
Here is an interview Marling did with NPR in 2008:
"I've never experienced anything like that last gig in Calcutta. I don't write songs that people can dance
to, but I wouldn't write songs if I didn't want people to listen to them. Apart from the 5 expats at the
front, nobody else wanted us to be there. But, like, it was out last gig, and I just felt like I wasn't
going to be defeated by this. So I only played four songs, but I screamed them. If you put it in that
horrible way, an entertainer, that's basically what I am; and that's what I had to be in India. I just had
to just play the songs and try and make people like them or make sure the people were having a good time.
And I'd never really thought of the craft of being an entertainer before."
---- Laura Marling
Marling discusses the song Sophia in a short radio interview.
The September Washington D.C. concert can be listened to in its entirety at the NPR site.
Great (if short) Marling interview with John Wilson of FRONT ROW on BBC 4.
Lynn Roberts of forfolkssake.com profiled SOPHIE MILNER, who did the cover art for the album I SPEAK BECAUSE I CAN, and for the Mumford & Sons EP LOVE YOUR GROUND.
Below: video of Marling on NBC's LAST CALL WITH CARSON DALY 30 September. Well, video of Marling at the Troubadour in LA. The video includes some great shots of the other musicians onstage with Marling.
When Laura Marling won the 2011 BRIT AWARD for British Female Solo Artist, the award was presented to her by Boy George. She also won the 2011 SHOCKWAVES NME AWARD for Best Solo Artist.
Find (or be found by) other fans
of Laura Marling.
NOTE: Fanlistings are as useful as one makes them. I have joined about fifteen of them and, although I allow my email to be listed there, I have as yet received no spam at all as a result. I do, nonetheless, take the precaution of using a web email such as Yahoo to minimize the risk of such things.
This site is not affiliated in any way with Laura Marling or her management. This is a non-profit fanlisting.
But without my ask I stretched and swelled,
And from my depths a child expelled.
My hands embraced an empty womb,
I fell and curled, prepared for tomb.
"My first love was punk, and my current love is punk, so maybe there's a punk album coming, though I probably wouldn't do it under my name."
"It's the one I still can't believe I wrote. It's quite unsettling; it was quite unsettling to record, and quite unsettling to play to people, and it's quite unsettling to listen to, I think. Sound-wise it's just a punch in the face, and the imagery is way darker than I intended it to be."
Marling perched on the small bench between us and, without a word, began to play a song so new, it wasn't on her latest album. As I sat, staring into Marling's eyes and watching her fingers glide across her guitar, the wild excitement I'd felt upon entering the room quickly morphed into a strange sense of calm. Marling's voice ricocheted offevery surface of the small room and enveloped me like a thick security blanket. Though I can't speak for Marling - who never met my gaze - I realized that it wasn't awkwardness I felt in that strange white room. It was a level of intimacy rarely experienced, let alone with strangers. I was so close to Marling that at one point, I actually found myself counting the freckles on her face.
"With a fear of death comes a fear of insignificance, and I thought well, whatever happens I'm going to be ok because I've done some things. It's not about being something as in being famous; it's being something as in being something to someone. And for me, the idea of being something is actively doing something with your life that positively impacts other people. If you can make people's day a bit better. You don't have to fix their problems, but you just have to make them feel a little more secure."
--- Laura Marling
"Court and Spark was the first album I owned that I listened to over and over. Its actually quite easy listening, the lyrics are simple but striking and the craftsmanship of the entire album is really special. She bridges a few gaps between genres she later went into with more depth, so it's the one I always come back to, but it's closely followed by Blue and Hejira.
"I remember my father playing me Same Situation when I was a nipper, and saying how nobody since has done melodies as well as Joni Mitchell. I concur. The thing that most affected me was just her resonance, and that is something she must have been born with."
----- Laura Marling
"It's not been about awards but how Laura can come back and advance her talents as a songwriter. It's an important record which sets her apart from her peers; she is markedly different and sits in her own space. And it's not a significant shift between albums stylistically but there are seismic, chameleon shifts as an artist which show Laura is stepping up as a brilliant storyteller."
"...odd shifty-rhymthed strums build into something darker and darker, heavier and intenser until we could almost be in PJ Harvey's '4 Track Demos'. 'Calling Sophia goddess of power,' invokes Marling, 'Instead I got The Beast and tonight he lies with me'.And about the final cut ALL MY RAGE:
"A bone-rattling strum with a death-shanty feel. 'I tip my cap to the raging sea / Cover me up I'm pale as night / With a mind so dark and skin so white / Is this the devil having fun / I tip my cap to the raging sun'. It seems to be a sort of nature sacrifice hymn concerning the loss of a child."
"Alone on stage for a handful of songs, Marling dispensed charming banter, playfully cursing and false starting. Her voice, an amalgam of Ani DiFranco, Dolores O'Riordan and dustbowl America, benefited from the sparse setup. The Leonard Cohen-indebted 'Night After Night,' with its dry delivery and quiet plucking, was a particular highlight. Rejoined by her band, the gig kicked into high gear, soaring for a towering take on 'Sophia' -- the Robertson Davies shout-out didn't hurt -- and climaxing with stomp-along hoedown, 'All My Rage'."
"Marling has a deep fascination with objects. Opening with 'Goodbye England (Covered In Snow)' from I Speak Because I Can, the song was as much an ode to everyday objects as it was to the city and the lover who have vanished. Jackets, coats, scarves, and books are all equally important characters, inseparable from the wounded humans who walk the snow-covered streets of London alone."
"The name Florence and the Machine started off as a private joke that got out of hand. I made music with my friend, who we called Isabella Machine to which I was Florence Robot. When I was about an hour away from my first gig, I still didn't have a name, so I thought 'Okay, I'll be Florence Robot/Isa Machine', before realising that name was so long it'd drive me mad."
The 7 inch vinyl of SOPHIA (B-side is a WNYC live performance of REST IN THE BED) is now available in the US and Canada from Ribbon Music. Price is $7, probably US dollars. Delivery to Canada is $6, delivery to US is $4.50.
Marling sang on the MYSTERY JET's single YOUNG LOVE, which was released in March of 2008.
A vinyl version of I SPEAK BECAUSE I CAN was released on 28 March and PICCADILLY RECORDS has the best price on it (£21.99).
The Telegraph has published a list of the 50 most collectable records. Number 39 on the list is Laura Marling's LONDON TOWN EP. Number one on the list is GOD SAVE THE QUEEN by the Sex Pistols.
A limited edition Marling 7-inch (that's a 45 in the US) is part of Third Man Records' Blue Series of releases. Marling performed Jackson C Frank's "Blues Run The Game" and Neil Young's "The Needle And The Damage Done" and White sat in the producer's chair for the session, which was done at White's Nashville studio. It is now available from THIRD MAN RECORDS, who have announced the 2011 First Quarter package for their subscription service/fanclub, The Vault, and it includes a double-LP compilation of last year's singles including the above mentioned recordings from Laura Marling.
SOPHIA, the penultimate track on "A Creature I Don't Know", received its first radio play on Zane Lowe's BBC Radio 1 show. Wish I knew who did the artwork for this. Below is a recording of the short interview of Marling by Zane Lowe after the initial playing of the song.
"...it's just a guy, about my age, on his way back from a gig. He asks us if we know who Laura Marling is, and we say we do, and he says we look like we would (I don't know what that means). He'd been to see her that night, on his own, and had been standing right in front of the stage and had lifted his leg up there to reveal to Laura Marling a tattoo, from his ankle to halfway up his calf.
"It said Laura Marling. In child-like handwriting, large, with two child-like flowers at each end.
"It was not the best tattoo I'd ever seen.
"The woman herself saw it and proclaimed him to be 'the most chronically weird' fan ever, to which he replied that he was drunk when he got it done. So she told him he was 'the coolest' fan ever. Respect to her for acknowledging him. It must be really, really odd when people you've never met ink your name on their body permanently."
"Laura" is of course derived from the Latin Masculine name Laurus (meaning laurel). It is a popular name because of two people. The first is St. Laura, who was a 9th century Spanish woman who became a nun after the death of her husband. The Moors, after invading and occupying Grenada, tossed her into a cauldron of molten lead. This was fatal but it raises another question: was molten lead so cheap and readily available to the invading Moors that they used it as an execution device? Did they bring it along, or did they use local lead? The second Laura of note is the woman addressed in the poetry of Petrarch. Her actual identity has not been conclusively established. He met her in 1327 in Avignon and she died of plague in 1348.
"Marling" is literally a clay line. In nautical terms, a "small stuff of two fiber strands, sometimes tarred, laid up left-handed, or a finer kind of spun yarn". Although she does like to spin yarns, the more likely derivation of the name is from Merlin which in turn means a small bold falcon, Falco columbarius, of the Northern Hemisphere. All of these references can be traced back no farther than the last half of the 14th century.
The most Marlings in the United States are in New Mexico, Texas, and Ohio.
"When I was growing up...I always thought that I would really like life in Jane Austen-era England; but
that's because I'd read that in books and gone, 'That's brilliant.' Her female characters are just so
cutting and witty and subtle. But then, you know, it was probably a pretty horrible life, being a woman in
a house for ever. But I liked the idea of the way things were done then.
-- Laura Marling
Ruth De Turberville started playing the cello and singing at a young age in the various orchestras and choirs of her home county of Berkshire, UK. She is classically trained.
She has done numerous live and studio recordings with the Cambridge band "The Winter Kings", and is now a part of Laura Marling's band.
Marling's band members are:
The photo above was posted by Isabelle Lawrence on Facebook. It shows Laura Marling at Apocalypstick at the Hawley Arms. Click here for video.
Born 1 February, 1990, Laura Beatrice Marling was raised in Eversley, a small town in Hampshire (population 829). Marling now lives in London. She has two sisters, one of them named Georgina (7 years older). Her dog, Skippy, died in 2008 at the age of 13. (Somewhere between living in Eversley and London, she lived in Reading, Berkshire where she attended school at Leighton Park.) Charles Dickens and Jane Austen were also from Hampshire, on the south coast of England. Her father, who was an amateur singer-songwriter, began teaching her the guitar when she was 3, and when she was 13 she wrote her first songs, inspired by The Libertines. The first record Laura Marling ever bought (according to an April NY Times interview) was by Macy Gray. Her father then insisted she listen to some good music, and played her lots of Joni Mitchell and Neil Young. She plays the bass and piano as well, and owns (and possibly can play) a dulcimer.
Here are some photos from Eversley courtesy of Eversley Online Gallery
Previously a member of Noah and the Whale, a good folky band that sounds a little bit Jamaican (they have a new album which is a bit of a downer and not at all Jamaican), Marling has also recorded with The Rakes, the Mystery Jets, and Johnny Flynn.
"Marling's fascination with John Steinbeck's third wife, Elaine, gave rise to 'Salinas'. The refrain 'I am from Salinas, where the women go forever' echoes the stoicism of a heroic woman watching a great man die. The record's title comes from British Biographer Jehanne Wake's novel Sisters of Fortune and, supported by the almost brutal cover art, helps cement the idea of the beast as a metaphor for complex, unnatural or unspoken desire."
"This album was definitely written with the knowledge that it would be recorded with a band, the same band I've been playing with for the last year, In some ways the set-up of the band dictated the sound. I bought a POG Pedal and borrowed an electric guitar the week before we hit the studio. We very nearly put the whole album through the POG."
"After a couple songs she thanked everyone for their appearance; 'Glad you are here...appreciate that a lot', and with that sentence the ice was broken. After that, one could really feel how more comfortable she was with every new song she played. In the bookstore atmosphere, the songs seemed to be in an environment where they fit in naturally, as did the singer. In between songs she showed off her new guitar skills, playing the Love Theme from Cinema Paradiso."
"Set in and around the illuminated Stanmer House, Foxtrot brought together a superb collection of artists who operate in the folk world. But this was no gathering of the purists, but rather a disparate bunch of mainly local musicians who take traditional folk and storytelling as a basis for their art and expand on it in contemporary ways. This was none better exemplified than by the simply stunning Laura Marling, who graced the stark marquee with only a guitar for accompaniment, and proceeded to captivate the 400 or so punters with her mature, highly fluid songwriting and pure, controlled voice. A classy finale to a classy event."
The Guardian's Sarah Boden interviewed Marling for their Culture section. Marling also
made the cover of FLY MAGAZINE this month. She was also
featured in the London Sunday Times' Art & Entertainment section. Liz Pelly interviewed
Marling for
Paste Magazine.
Thom Stone has a duet with Laura Marling on his MySpace page. It is strange and Marling's voice is barely recognizable, but she is there.
"The Water" a duet with Laura Marling, has been released as a single from Johnny Flynn's critically acclaimed second album BEEN LISTENING. Soko has given the Flynn album a ringing endorsement. calling it "an absolute beauty".
Marling did some of the vocals for track five of The Rakes CD "Ten New Messages". Interestingly enough, she is listed in the album notes as "Laura Marlin" without the ending g. This cannot yet be downloaded in the US. The import CD is available from Amazon.
With the Mystery Jets she recorded "Young Love" which was released as the second track on their CD "Twenty-One". The song has also been released as a single. The B side of the single is "Flakes" which is track four on the aforementioned CD but the version on the single has ben recorded on a dictaphone. This may not have been a good idea.
"Alas I Cannot Swim", "I Speak Because I Can" and other Laura Marling recordings can be downloaded from iTunes. TWENTY-ONE, by the Mystery Jets, is also available for download from iTunes.
University of Oxford's Environmental Change Institute has published a study of the greenhouse gas emissions of the UK music industry.
