That's all i can tell you for now.
Laura Marling
Started by
Mitchell
, Nov 05 2007 11:22 AM
229 replies to this topic
#1
Mitchell
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dirty old man
Posted 05 November 2007 - 11:22 AM
Nice bowl of Crunchy Nut you got here, pretty expensive as I recall.
#2
tweed
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Posted 05 November 2007 - 11:32 AM
Laura Marling is a folk-pop singer-songwriter from Reading, Berkshire, England.
Marling has toured with a number of well-known indie artists in the UK including Jamie T, who personally invited her on tour with him last year after he attended her second-ever gig.
She performed at this summer's 02 Wireless Festival [1] and also performed at the first Underage Music Festival in August 2007 at Victoria Park, East London.
Her debut single came out on WayOutWest Records, with a new single coming out soon on Virgin Records.
She appeared on The Rakes track Suspicious Eyes, from the band's second album Ten New Messages.
Twilight Revival
Friday, March 13th - Thornwood Lounge (Wood Dale,IL)
Tuesday, April 21 - Abbey Pub (Chicago, IL)
Web Site I MySpace
Friday, March 13th - Thornwood Lounge (Wood Dale,IL)
Tuesday, April 21 - Abbey Pub (Chicago, IL)
Web Site I MySpace
#3
Mitchell
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dirty old man
Posted 04 February 2008 - 08:51 AM
'My songs are not pretty'
At the age of just 18, Laura Marling may be Britain's most promising singer-songwriter. She tells Jude Rogers about her dark, bold music
Watch the video for her song Ghosts in Quicktime, RealPlayer or Windows Media Video
Monday February 4, 2008
The Guardian
In a recent posting on a music website, one of Laura Marling's growing army of fans described her output as "pretty folk songs about boys". "That made me so angry," says Marling, her white-blonde hair held back in a clip, her thin frame wrapped in a trench coat. This girlish figure sitting opposite me in a west London cafe may have just turned 18, but her songs bear the experience of someone much more mature.
"No, no, seriously," she goes on. "Take another look. My songs are not pretty. They're what I call optimistic realism." She tips her head impishly. "Some are depressing, and I have depressive sides to my character, like most people, but I'm always telling myself to look on the bright side."
In a music scene teeming with talented young women, Marling stands apart as quite possibly Britain's most promising singer-songwriter. She's not a soul-influenced ingenue like Adele or Duffy, nor a pop performer in the style of Lily Allen or Kate Nash (with whom she has toured), but an accomplished performer in the folk vein. In fact, she manages to make folk feel modern. Her bold, dark songs recall Joni Mitchell or Neil Young, yet remain her own. She has already notched up a Glastonbury performance and, hilariously, was refused entry to her own gig at a London venue for being too young - so she busked outside instead.
Marling's music may dwell on life's difficulties, but her upbringing was far from such things. She was born in Eversley, near Reading, in 1990, the youngest of three girls. Her mother is a gardener, her father an amateur singer-songwriter. He taught Marling the guitar from the age of three, and forced all his daughters to listen to the 1960s folk records he loved: Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan. "Dad would sit us down and say, 'This is real music!' I learned so much so young."
Marling started writing her own songs in her early teens. The turning point, she says, came when she heard I See a Darkness, the brooding 1999 album by Bonnie "Prince" Billy, the bleak, folk-influenced American singer-songwriter: "It was like a shock to the system." What did she love about it? "Its intensity. It was almost as if I shouldn't have been listening to it, as if I was invading his emotions."
But it was the American musicians Nina Nastasia and Diane Cluck who most inspired Marling, though she worried about her singing. The artists she loved had distinctive, evocative voices; she felt "like a girl from Reading". "So I tried to make it different, but I sounded like a knob. It took a lot of time and practice for me to realise that there's no point trying to be something you're not." Today, her voice is simple, strong and affecting, recalling the natural folk-rock voices of 1960s singers Sandy Denny and Jacqui McShee. Live, its power is astonishing, not least because it emerges from such a young, bashful-looking woman.
Marling started gigging three years ago. She played shows in the unlikely environs of Brentford FC, and attracted the attention of Virgin Records, which signed her in 2006 and is releasing her first album, Alas I Cannot Swim, today. One track on it, Tap at My Window, is inspired by a Philip Larkin poem, which makes it all the more surprising that Marling - whose image-rich lyrics suggest a love of literature - failed her English GCSE. "I loved books," she says, "but I didn't love tearing apart a character. I like building a character."
She gets a lot from books; her favourite authors are Jane Austen and the Brontės. "They're always made out to be so sweetly romantic, but they're not - they're brutal. I love the way you can fall in love with a piece of literature; how words alone can get your heart doing that." She admits to struggling with some writers, and pulls two books out of her bulky handbag to make her point: James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and comedian Russell Brand's autobiography, My Booky Wook. "The Joyce is really interesting, but guess which one I've been reading today." She raises an eyebrow theatrically. "It's really well-written, though!"
For someone so young, Marling writes convincingly about breakdowns, tough emotions and sex. Her characters are strong, fighting to protect the people they hold close. One song on the album, Night Terror, contains a particularly affecting line about a lover having a nightmare: "I roll over and shake him tightly and whisper, if they want you, well, then they're gonna have to fight me." Marling admits the songs are personal, but will divulge nothing more. "It's just stream-of-consciousness stuff, really. And like everyone else, my consciousness has dark, jagged parts. Especially when it's four in the morning and something's happened and you have to write about it."
But if her songs are streams-of-consciousness, she sees the album as a single entity. "I really wanted it to be a coherent piece of work, with running themes about love and death and water. Like a journey, from songs about the distance between people, to the lift in the album's middle, and then back to distance again. Ha! I feel stupid saying that out loud."
Marling also differs from the average 18-year-old in her strong views about how music downloads have changed listeners' experience of music. "People don't appreciate music any more," she says, suddenly verging on anger. "They don't adore it. They don't buy vinyl and just love it. They love their laptops like their best friend, but they don't love a record for its sound quality and its artwork. I wanted to do something about it."
This confident approach - a striking combination of old-fashioned ethics and youthful idealism - has characterised Marling's career so far. Apart from her solo work, she sings and rattles maracas with the folk-rock band Noah & the Whale. Last year, she pointedly refused any studio makeup when she appeared on Later ... With Jools Holland, and she recorded her album in just one month.
She has also produced a special edition of it, called Songbox. Inside a wooden box, fans will find the album, a gig ticket and 12 mementoes to represent each song, including a board game. Listeners must work out which song each memento is for. "I wanted to show, in a physical way, how much work goes into an album," she says. With her own career now building momentum, Marling feels that this is a good time for new artists. "It's like the industry has come full circle," she says. "You feel it in the air. People are more willing to give you some time to develop, a chance to be who you are." That sounds like optimistic realism, I suggest. Marling's pale face lights up. "And don't we need more of it!".
· Alas I Cannot Swim is out now on Virgin
At the age of just 18, Laura Marling may be Britain's most promising singer-songwriter. She tells Jude Rogers about her dark, bold music
Watch the video for her song Ghosts in Quicktime, RealPlayer or Windows Media Video
Monday February 4, 2008
The Guardian
In a recent posting on a music website, one of Laura Marling's growing army of fans described her output as "pretty folk songs about boys". "That made me so angry," says Marling, her white-blonde hair held back in a clip, her thin frame wrapped in a trench coat. This girlish figure sitting opposite me in a west London cafe may have just turned 18, but her songs bear the experience of someone much more mature.
"No, no, seriously," she goes on. "Take another look. My songs are not pretty. They're what I call optimistic realism." She tips her head impishly. "Some are depressing, and I have depressive sides to my character, like most people, but I'm always telling myself to look on the bright side."
In a music scene teeming with talented young women, Marling stands apart as quite possibly Britain's most promising singer-songwriter. She's not a soul-influenced ingenue like Adele or Duffy, nor a pop performer in the style of Lily Allen or Kate Nash (with whom she has toured), but an accomplished performer in the folk vein. In fact, she manages to make folk feel modern. Her bold, dark songs recall Joni Mitchell or Neil Young, yet remain her own. She has already notched up a Glastonbury performance and, hilariously, was refused entry to her own gig at a London venue for being too young - so she busked outside instead.
Marling's music may dwell on life's difficulties, but her upbringing was far from such things. She was born in Eversley, near Reading, in 1990, the youngest of three girls. Her mother is a gardener, her father an amateur singer-songwriter. He taught Marling the guitar from the age of three, and forced all his daughters to listen to the 1960s folk records he loved: Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan. "Dad would sit us down and say, 'This is real music!' I learned so much so young."
Marling started writing her own songs in her early teens. The turning point, she says, came when she heard I See a Darkness, the brooding 1999 album by Bonnie "Prince" Billy, the bleak, folk-influenced American singer-songwriter: "It was like a shock to the system." What did she love about it? "Its intensity. It was almost as if I shouldn't have been listening to it, as if I was invading his emotions."
But it was the American musicians Nina Nastasia and Diane Cluck who most inspired Marling, though she worried about her singing. The artists she loved had distinctive, evocative voices; she felt "like a girl from Reading". "So I tried to make it different, but I sounded like a knob. It took a lot of time and practice for me to realise that there's no point trying to be something you're not." Today, her voice is simple, strong and affecting, recalling the natural folk-rock voices of 1960s singers Sandy Denny and Jacqui McShee. Live, its power is astonishing, not least because it emerges from such a young, bashful-looking woman.
Marling started gigging three years ago. She played shows in the unlikely environs of Brentford FC, and attracted the attention of Virgin Records, which signed her in 2006 and is releasing her first album, Alas I Cannot Swim, today. One track on it, Tap at My Window, is inspired by a Philip Larkin poem, which makes it all the more surprising that Marling - whose image-rich lyrics suggest a love of literature - failed her English GCSE. "I loved books," she says, "but I didn't love tearing apart a character. I like building a character."
She gets a lot from books; her favourite authors are Jane Austen and the Brontės. "They're always made out to be so sweetly romantic, but they're not - they're brutal. I love the way you can fall in love with a piece of literature; how words alone can get your heart doing that." She admits to struggling with some writers, and pulls two books out of her bulky handbag to make her point: James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and comedian Russell Brand's autobiography, My Booky Wook. "The Joyce is really interesting, but guess which one I've been reading today." She raises an eyebrow theatrically. "It's really well-written, though!"
For someone so young, Marling writes convincingly about breakdowns, tough emotions and sex. Her characters are strong, fighting to protect the people they hold close. One song on the album, Night Terror, contains a particularly affecting line about a lover having a nightmare: "I roll over and shake him tightly and whisper, if they want you, well, then they're gonna have to fight me." Marling admits the songs are personal, but will divulge nothing more. "It's just stream-of-consciousness stuff, really. And like everyone else, my consciousness has dark, jagged parts. Especially when it's four in the morning and something's happened and you have to write about it."
But if her songs are streams-of-consciousness, she sees the album as a single entity. "I really wanted it to be a coherent piece of work, with running themes about love and death and water. Like a journey, from songs about the distance between people, to the lift in the album's middle, and then back to distance again. Ha! I feel stupid saying that out loud."
Marling also differs from the average 18-year-old in her strong views about how music downloads have changed listeners' experience of music. "People don't appreciate music any more," she says, suddenly verging on anger. "They don't adore it. They don't buy vinyl and just love it. They love their laptops like their best friend, but they don't love a record for its sound quality and its artwork. I wanted to do something about it."
This confident approach - a striking combination of old-fashioned ethics and youthful idealism - has characterised Marling's career so far. Apart from her solo work, she sings and rattles maracas with the folk-rock band Noah & the Whale. Last year, she pointedly refused any studio makeup when she appeared on Later ... With Jools Holland, and she recorded her album in just one month.
She has also produced a special edition of it, called Songbox. Inside a wooden box, fans will find the album, a gig ticket and 12 mementoes to represent each song, including a board game. Listeners must work out which song each memento is for. "I wanted to show, in a physical way, how much work goes into an album," she says. With her own career now building momentum, Marling feels that this is a good time for new artists. "It's like the industry has come full circle," she says. "You feel it in the air. People are more willing to give you some time to develop, a chance to be who you are." That sounds like optimistic realism, I suggest. Marling's pale face lights up. "And don't we need more of it!".
· Alas I Cannot Swim is out now on Virgin
Nice bowl of Crunchy Nut you got here, pretty expensive as I recall.
#4
torrance
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Newbie
Posted 11 February 2008 - 08:29 AM
a worrying symptom of my growing addiction to limited editions (in rainbows, quaristice + this in a couple of months), i just took delivery of the songbox version of this, i'd only heard night terror and seen her as part of noah and the whale supporting bss before that but i'm thinking this was a good purchase, very nice set, lovely, i can smell ink, £17 for all this plus a gig ticket, fantastiche
oh and the music sounds b00tiful so far too
oh and the music sounds b00tiful so far too
#5
Mitchell
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dirty old man
Posted 11 February 2008 - 08:38 AM
Yeah it's a good deal and I was glad to see the effort made with it, I didn't realise the actual disc wasn't out today.
Nice bowl of Crunchy Nut you got here, pretty expensive as I recall.
#6
torrance
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Posted 11 February 2008 - 08:50 AM
nearly finished, not one miss yet. they've rerecorded night terror, big percussion and more strings and the ambient sounds linking songs were something i wasn't expecting, doesn't seem to take anything away from it though.
very good first listen, and i realized i knew my manic & i too, but not well enough to know if it's a rerecording
very good first listen, and i realized i knew my manic & i too, but not well enough to know if it's a rerecording
#7
Mitchell
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dirty old man
Posted 11 February 2008 - 08:57 AM
'Failure' is a re-recording, I can't recall if the album has a new version of MM&I but I'm leaning towards yes, I'll check tonight.
Nice bowl of Crunchy Nut you got here, pretty expensive as I recall.
#8
Mitchell
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dirty old man
Posted 11 February 2008 - 09:01 AM
She also was on Stephen Merchant's BBC6 Music show (from about 1:05 onwards) on Sunday.
Nice bowl of Crunchy Nut you got here, pretty expensive as I recall.
#10
Mitchell
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dirty old man
Posted 11 February 2008 - 02:51 PM
I got my ticket for the Union Chapel concert online now.
Nice bowl of Crunchy Nut you got here, pretty expensive as I recall.
#11
Mitchell
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dirty old man
Posted 14 February 2008 - 12:14 PM
I got my ticket for the Union Chapel concert online now.
Over subscribed so now I'm going on the 9th.
Nice bowl of Crunchy Nut you got here, pretty expensive as I recall.
#12
elcorazon
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Rockist
Posted 14 February 2008 - 12:16 PM
And I thought I was the king of the masturbatory threads. I should check this chick out. Would I like her, mitch?
Sail Away: The Songs of Randy Newman -7.5/10
Dusty Springfield - Dusty in Memphis 8.5/10
Buddy & Julie Miller - Written in Chalk wow, first listen, but great great record! 9.3/10
Justin Townes Earle - Midnight at the Moviessurprisingly great, never picked up his past releases, but this one's knocking my socks off right away, 8.7/10
M. Ward - Hold Time 8.0/10
Neko Case -Middle Cyclone her best I've heard is my initial impression, but too soon to rate, haven't had a really good listen yet 7.8/10
Dusty Springfield - Dusty in Memphis 8.5/10
Buddy & Julie Miller - Written in Chalk wow, first listen, but great great record! 9.3/10
Justin Townes Earle - Midnight at the Moviessurprisingly great, never picked up his past releases, but this one's knocking my socks off right away, 8.7/10
M. Ward - Hold Time 8.0/10
Neko Case -Middle Cyclone her best I've heard is my initial impression, but too soon to rate, haven't had a really good listen yet 7.8/10
#13
Mitchell
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dirty old man
Posted 14 February 2008 - 12:25 PM
Actually you might, it's much closer to sounding like Joni Mitchell than Lily Allen.
Ghosts
Crawled Out Of The Sea
Night Terror
Ghosts
Crawled Out Of The Sea
Night Terror
Nice bowl of Crunchy Nut you got here, pretty expensive as I recall.
#14
torrance
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Posted 14 February 2008 - 12:39 PM
i would go as far as to say anyone who doesn't like this is somehow under the influence of satan 
second best reccud of the year and surprisingly not that far behind bsp at all. i mean i have only had it 3 days, but i've played it over ten times, its seriously addictive
second best reccud of the year and surprisingly not that far behind bsp at all. i mean i have only had it 3 days, but i've played it over ten times, its seriously addictive
#15
Alright Still
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Posted 14 February 2008 - 12:43 PM
It's a little too slow for my taste, but it is certainly very good. I think if her voice was more intriguing I'd love it, but it's kind of boring.
#16
torrance
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Newbie
Posted 14 February 2008 - 12:53 PM
i was surprised by how jaunty a lot of it was actually, mind i was coming at it expecting a folk reccud, i reckon a lot of people will hear of her name dropped with all these other new(ish) young british girl poppers and they would find it a bit slow in comparison.It's a little too slow for my taste, but it is certainly very good. I think if her voice was more intriguing I'd love it, but it's kind of boring.
i think it's a gorgeous reccud though
#17
Mitchell
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dirty old man
Posted 14 February 2008 - 01:12 PM
new(ish)
Read this as jewish first time, confused me.
Nice bowl of Crunchy Nut you got here, pretty expensive as I recall.
#18
torrance
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#19
Mitchell
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dirty old man
Posted 18 February 2008 - 12:35 PM
album went in at 45.
Nice bowl of Crunchy Nut you got here, pretty expensive as I recall.
#20
Alright Still
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Posted 01 March 2008 - 11:32 PM
It's a little too slow for my taste, but it is certainly very good. I think if her voice was more intriguing I'd love it, but it's kind of boring.
I'm a cunt. I fucking LOVE this album now. I love how it all flows together. The lyrics are genius, and her vocals are insanely captivating. "Ghosts" is EPIC.
