Posts Tagged ‘laura marling’

Whilst the likes of Adele and Lily Allen have spearheaded the evolution of a new kind of femme fatale; a convoy of women who fiercely resent the sexually manufactured agendas that have plagued record labels for years, Laura Marling, the most graceful and divine English singer-songwriter to emerge since Kate Bush, seems content on sidling into her own state of semi-oblivion, where she does her own thing, her own way, in a classical style that could flourish in any era.

A bold folk centurion for the internet age, unnerved by both decadence and posterity, Marling, at just twenty-two years (judging by frequent call-outs of “Happy birthday Laura!”, she only hit that age recently), has already carved her own place amongst the highest echelon of modern songwriters. With three albums and a unique legacy rapidly forming under her name, a packed house at Melbourne’s Forum Theatre greeted her arrival as if she were a songstress sent from the gods. And judging by the classical Greek architecture that coats the sides of the stage, it was hard to think otherwise.

Laura Marling, Gruff Rhys and Anna Calvi are amongst the artists due to celebrate the 10th birthday of BBC 6Music next month.

“I Was Just A Card” by Laura Marling Produced by EMI Records Directed by Kate Jablonski & Brian Lipchik

And so to the third and final part of Live4ever’s 2011 retrospective. A year packed with some genuinely outstanding releases, 2011 has enjoyed some of the most unanimously acclaimed records of recent years; PJ Harvey has won seemingly every award up for grabs thanks to ‘Let England Shake’, Kate Bush has wowed everyone with her first record of the decade, while the likes of The Boxer Rebellion, FIGO and The Minutes have come to the party with equally impressive, under-the-radar efforts just as deserving of your precious time and attention.

To celebrate another year of great music, the Live4ever Ezine is offering two readers the opportunity to win a pair of Boom earphones; a prize packed with both style and sound quality. So to be in with a chance of winning, when you’ve been through the pick of the LPs which have been taking up our space throughout the year, leave a comment below telling us your own Top 5 Albums of 2011 to be automatically entered into our giveaway. Good luck!

Laura Marling has unveiled a new UK tour to take place next March – her second major tour of Britain in support of the 2011 album ‘A Creature I Don’t Know‘.

Laura Marling has announced a short US tour in support of her 2011 album ‘A Creature I Don’t Know‘.

Kasabian are on top of the UK Album Chart this week, with their new LP ‘Velociraptor!‘ debuting at #1 on the chart. The Leicester band have knocked last week’s number one, Ed Sheeran, to #2, while new supergroup SuperHeavy have entered at #13.

Elsewhere, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Laura Marling have both dropped out of the top ten this week, to #16 and #15 respectively.

British songwriter Ed Sheeran has topped this week’s UK Album Chart with ‘+‘, while Laura Marling‘s third album ‘A Creature I Don’t Know‘ has entered at no4.

Elsewhere, The Kooks have entered at #10 with ‘Junk Of The Heart‘, and the re-mastered edition of The Beatles‘ ‘1‘ collection drops to no.12.

Human experience is a funny old thing. Well. It is if by ‘funny’ you mean ‘an utterly bewildering, unremitting source of confusion and uncertainty’. Starting to see why they say ‘funny’ now… Let’s say then, that Laura Marling’s new album is all about funny old things.

Marling picks up on that universal principle of songwriting – write what you know, what you feel. She picks up on this and she goes one further, writing songs about what people know and feel…but try to deny. This is, after all, the reason why we come to identify with songs like ‘Sophia’ and not songs like ‘Umber-Umberella’.

Everybody knows ‘Sophia‘. Never mind if you haven’t heard the song yet; we all know this girl. Everyone who’s ever fallen out of love has met her, hated her, wished terrible wrongs upon her. Laura Marling has found a way to voice those dark, jealous thoughts, to throw the windows open wide and let the light in on them.

The remarkable thing is that she expresses these thoughts with such eloquence. Her deceptively joyful arrangement takes the lion’s share of the credit for this. From the fingerpicking pattern whispers that open ‘Sophia’, to the brisk, impassioned pace at the heart of the song, there’s an odd comfort to how Marling makes it all so understandable.