A Creature I Don't Know
Encyclopedia
A Creature I Don't Know is the third album by British
singer-songwriter Laura Marling
, released on 9 September 2011. The album was announced in June 2011, along with a preview of a new song, featured in a video posted on Laura Marling's official YouTube channel. The first track from the album to receive radio airplay was "Sophia", on 25 July 2011 on BBC Radio 1. The "When The Bell Tolls" tour of America, Canada and England was announced on July 25, and will take place this September and October 2011 to support the album.
2010 tour. It was a solitary time which she remembered as "a lot of sitting in cafes, newspaper crosswords and scrawling in notebooks before any songs took shape". This gestation period was, according to Marling, essential. "I think I stew over ideas for a long time. And I can get fixated on an idea, it will probably start with something from a book I've found interesting, and then I'll probably think about it and then I'll have conversations with myself about it, and then obviously it seeps into my conscious and a song will be written about it", she told The Guardian
. "The songs had been written, or more accurately there was nothing left to say, but I think I waited for a month or so before I did anything with them. Then most of them were demoed sitting here, with a microphone hanging there", she added.
She started writing and demoing the material alone, as well as working out the vocal arrangements before she played any of the songs to her band and producer. "It was quite an interesting way of doing it, because it allowed me to put my stamp on it before anybody else put their stamp on it. With the first two albums – Charlie (Fink, lead singer of Noah and the Whale
) produced Alas I Cannot Swim, and it's as much his album as it is mine, and with I Speak Because I Can, the style of the drumming and the bass playing is very much a representation of the characters who were playing on that album, and Ethan
(Johns) stepping in as well. This time I thought: 'Well, I've got the confidence now, and I know what I want it to sound like, so before anybody else gets their grubby mitts on it, why don't I put my stamp on it?'" the singer said.
Marling has been often described as an avid reader, and some of the album's songs bear direct references to works of literature. "Salinas was inspired by a book about John Steinbeck
. "Sophia" (the ancient goddess of wisdom, sometimes seen as God's female complement) was written under the influence of Robertson Davies
's philosophical novel The Rebel Angels
. The album's other main topics are "love, rage, desire, family, devils, angels, devotion, betrayal and the roles women play".
reports a score of 8.0 based on 31 professional reviews.
According to the Q
review (subtitled: "Nu-folk starlet shines ever brighter on third outing"), the immediate impression upon hearing the album "is that of growth". "The unconvincing estuary English
is long gone, replaced by a womanly panoply of burrs, sighs and incantatory dips that certainly make sense of past Joni Mitchell
comparisons but in truth don't adhere to any single accent", Keith Cameron writes. While "the album's first third settles into a woozy jazz ballad territory", still, "the true grit of Laura Marling prevails amid the easy listening, and ultimately saves her third album’s deep well of substance from being smothered by its equally potent reserve of style", he argues. "It's testimony to her abilities that one can imagine her carrying the orchestral glimmer just as readily as death’s head balladry. Either way, her star power remains undiminished", the reviewer concludes. The New Musical Express reviewer also marks changes in the singer's style: "Gone is Marling's pure and strident alto voice, the sturdy re-telling of the folk-pop handbook and any suspicion that she fitted seamlessly into the heart sore singer-songwriter tradition. The voice is lower, the songs take too many wilful left turns for them still to be classified as 'folk' and the emotions have taken flight. We're still in the realm of her senses, but she's casting away the things of childhood and facing adulthood head on and clear-eyed". According to the review, "if I Speak Because I Can
was a towering musical achievement, A Creature I Don't Know is an emotional triumph". "This real-life fairytale is made up of myriad difficult home truths but Marling's hejira, her flight to freedom, makes for absolutely compelling listening", Priya Elan concludes.
Speaking of possible influences, Joshua Love of Pitchfork
mentions (apart from Joni Mitchell) Fairport Convention
, Leonard Cohen
, Fiona Apple
, Tori Amos
, and PJ Harvey
. Yet, "Laura Marling's music feels timeless… Her songs feel divorced from time, lacking clues or signposts to indicate whether her stories and scenes might be set 500 years ago or yesterday… Often with Marling it's not entirely clear whether these songs are springing forth from a 21-year-old Englishwoman or some deathless, wandering spirit", writes the reviewer, regarding the album "…a brave artistic approach", calling Marling "an extremely commanding" and praising her "scarily impressive self-possession". This timeless quality of the album's music is being picked on by the Uncut
reviewer, too. "Laura Marling was born in Hampshire
in 1990… Yet she might just as easily have been born in Brooklyn
in 1950, or Liverpool
in the 1980. From the moment Marling emerged, aged 18, with her remarkably assured debut, Alas I Cannot Swim, her music seemed to float high above the specifics of time, age and place", writes Graeme Thompson.
The Mitchell comparison crops up in the BBC Music
, The Scotsman
, The Independent
and Daily Telegraph reviews, too. "…She wears her furrowed brow with a grace and stoic humour well in advance of her nu-folk peers; combining the sort of winking stoicism that was once the preserve of commie-sympathising, flinty-faced menfolk with the supple, jazzy tones of idol Joni Mitchell", writes Alex Denney of the BBC, referring to "The Beast" as a "rain-lashed monster of a tune" and calling another song, "Night After Night", a "classic, folksy pick that allows Marling's voice to revel in its own beauty". According to Telegraphs Helen Brown, "Like Mitchell, Marling started out as part of a 'new folk' scene... but has increasingly struck out alone into a starker, stranger and more jazz-inflected musical landscape. Like Mitchell, she stakes her claim to this territory with muscular, literate lyrics and idiosyncratic guitar tunings". The Irish Times
calls the album "a splendid musical progression" while according to the Paste Magazine, A Creature I Don't Know is Marling's "best album yet— definitely her most musically and lyrically ambitious".
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
singer-songwriter Laura Marling
Laura Marling
Laura Beatrice Marling is an English folk musician from Eversley, Hampshire.Initially prominent within the London folk scene, she has also toured with a number of well-known indie artists in the UK. Her debut album Alas, I Cannot Swim and her second album I Speak Because I Can were nominated for...
, released on 9 September 2011. The album was announced in June 2011, along with a preview of a new song, featured in a video posted on Laura Marling's official YouTube channel. The first track from the album to receive radio airplay was "Sophia", on 25 July 2011 on BBC Radio 1. The "When The Bell Tolls" tour of America, Canada and England was announced on July 25, and will take place this September and October 2011 to support the album.
Background
Marling began working on the album during the lull after her I Speak Because I CanI Speak Because I Can
All tracks by Laura Marling.# "Devil's Spoke" – 3:40# "Made by Maid" – 2:51# "Rambling Man" – 3:16# "Blackberry Stone" – 3:28# "Alpha Shallows" – 3:42# "Goodbye England " – 3:45# "Hope in the Air" – 4:32...
2010 tour. It was a solitary time which she remembered as "a lot of sitting in cafes, newspaper crosswords and scrawling in notebooks before any songs took shape". This gestation period was, according to Marling, essential. "I think I stew over ideas for a long time. And I can get fixated on an idea, it will probably start with something from a book I've found interesting, and then I'll probably think about it and then I'll have conversations with myself about it, and then obviously it seeps into my conscious and a song will be written about it", she told The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
. "The songs had been written, or more accurately there was nothing left to say, but I think I waited for a month or so before I did anything with them. Then most of them were demoed sitting here, with a microphone hanging there", she added.
She started writing and demoing the material alone, as well as working out the vocal arrangements before she played any of the songs to her band and producer. "It was quite an interesting way of doing it, because it allowed me to put my stamp on it before anybody else put their stamp on it. With the first two albums – Charlie (Fink, lead singer of Noah and the Whale
Noah and the Whale
Noah and the Whale are an English indie folk band from Twickenham, London, England formed in 2006. The band consists of Charlie Fink , Tom Hobden , Matt "Urby Whale" Owens , Fred Abbott , and Michael Petulla .-Early years and Peaceful, the World Lays Me Down...
) produced Alas I Cannot Swim, and it's as much his album as it is mine, and with I Speak Because I Can, the style of the drumming and the bass playing is very much a representation of the characters who were playing on that album, and Ethan
Ethan Johns
Ethan Johns is a record producer, engineer, mixer, musician, and songwriter who has worked with such artists such as Ryan Adams, Kings of Leon, Ray LaMontagne, Kevin Prosch, Rufus Wainwright, Howard Eliott Payne, Emmylou Harris, Crowded House, Laura Marling, Luthea Salom, and Crosby, Stills and...
(Johns) stepping in as well. This time I thought: 'Well, I've got the confidence now, and I know what I want it to sound like, so before anybody else gets their grubby mitts on it, why don't I put my stamp on it?'" the singer said.
Marling has been often described as an avid reader, and some of the album's songs bear direct references to works of literature. "Salinas was inspired by a book about John Steinbeck
John Steinbeck
John Ernst Steinbeck, Jr. was an American writer. He is widely known for the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden and the novella Of Mice and Men...
. "Sophia" (the ancient goddess of wisdom, sometimes seen as God's female complement) was written under the influence of Robertson Davies
Robertson Davies
William Robertson Davies, CC, OOnt, FRSC, FRSL was a Canadian novelist, playwright, critic, journalist, and professor. He was one of Canada's best-known and most popular authors, and one of its most distinguished "men of letters", a term Davies is variously said to have gladly accepted for himself...
's philosophical novel The Rebel Angels
The Rebel Angels
The Rebel Angels is Canadian author Robertson Davies's most noted novel, after those that form his Deptford Trilogy.First published by Macmillan of Canada in 1981, The Rebel Angels is the first of the three connected novels of Davies' Cornish Trilogy...
. The album's other main topics are "love, rage, desire, family, devils, angels, devotion, betrayal and the roles women play".
Critical reception
Upon its release, A Creature I Don't Know received generally good reviews from music critics. Aggregating website AnyDecentMusic?AnyDecentMusic?
AnyDecentMusic? is a website that collates reviews of contemporary music albums, covering rock, pop, electronic, dance, folk, country, roots and urban...
reports a score of 8.0 based on 31 professional reviews.
According to the Q
Q (magazine)
Q is a popular music magazine published monthly in the United Kingdom.Founders Mark Ellen and David Hepworth were dismayed by the music press of the time, which they felt was ignoring a generation of older music buyers who were buying CDs — then still a new technology...
review (subtitled: "Nu-folk starlet shines ever brighter on third outing"), the immediate impression upon hearing the album "is that of growth". "The unconvincing estuary English
Estuary English
Estuary English is a dialect of English widely spoken in South East England, especially along the River Thames and its estuary. Phonetician John C. Wells defines Estuary English as "Standard English spoken with the accent of the southeast of England"...
is long gone, replaced by a womanly panoply of burrs, sighs and incantatory dips that certainly make sense of past Joni Mitchell
Joni Mitchell
Joni Mitchell, CC is a Canadian musician, singer songwriter, and painter. Mitchell began singing in small nightclubs in her native Saskatchewan and Western Canada and then busking in the streets and dives of Toronto...
comparisons but in truth don't adhere to any single accent", Keith Cameron writes. While "the album's first third settles into a woozy jazz ballad territory", still, "the true grit of Laura Marling prevails amid the easy listening, and ultimately saves her third album’s deep well of substance from being smothered by its equally potent reserve of style", he argues. "It's testimony to her abilities that one can imagine her carrying the orchestral glimmer just as readily as death’s head balladry. Either way, her star power remains undiminished", the reviewer concludes. The New Musical Express reviewer also marks changes in the singer's style: "Gone is Marling's pure and strident alto voice, the sturdy re-telling of the folk-pop handbook and any suspicion that she fitted seamlessly into the heart sore singer-songwriter tradition. The voice is lower, the songs take too many wilful left turns for them still to be classified as 'folk' and the emotions have taken flight. We're still in the realm of her senses, but she's casting away the things of childhood and facing adulthood head on and clear-eyed". According to the review, "if I Speak Because I Can
I Speak Because I Can
All tracks by Laura Marling.# "Devil's Spoke" – 3:40# "Made by Maid" – 2:51# "Rambling Man" – 3:16# "Blackberry Stone" – 3:28# "Alpha Shallows" – 3:42# "Goodbye England " – 3:45# "Hope in the Air" – 4:32...
was a towering musical achievement, A Creature I Don't Know is an emotional triumph". "This real-life fairytale is made up of myriad difficult home truths but Marling's hejira, her flight to freedom, makes for absolutely compelling listening", Priya Elan concludes.
Speaking of possible influences, Joshua Love of Pitchfork
Pitchfork Media
Pitchfork Media, usually known simply as Pitchfork or P4k, is a Chicago-based daily Internet publication established in 1995 that is devoted to music criticism and commentary, music news, and artist interviews. Its focus is on underground and independent music, especially indie rock...
mentions (apart from Joni Mitchell) Fairport Convention
Fairport Convention
Fairport Convention are an English folk rock and later electric folk band, formed in 1967 who are still recording and touring today. They are widely regarded as the most important single group in the English folk rock movement...
, Leonard Cohen
Leonard Cohen
Leonard Norman Cohen, is a Canadian singer-songwriter, musician, poet and novelist. Cohen published his first book of poetry in Montreal in 1956 and his first novel in 1963. His work often explores religion, isolation, sexuality and interpersonal relationships...
, Fiona Apple
Fiona Apple
Fiona Apple McAfee Maggart is an American singer-songwriter and pianist. Apple met international acclaim for her 1996 debut album, Tidal, which was a critical and commercial success...
, Tori Amos
Tori Amos
Tori Amos is an American pianist, singer-songwriter and composer. She was at the forefront of a number of female singer-songwriters in the early 1990s and was noteworthy early in her career as one of the few alternative rock performers to use a piano as her primary instrument...
, and PJ Harvey
PJ Harvey
Polly Jean Harvey is an English musician, singer-songwriter, composer and occasional artist. Primarily known as a vocalist and guitarist, she is also proficient with a wide range of instruments including piano, organ, bass, saxophone, and most recently, the autoharp.Harvey began her career in...
. Yet, "Laura Marling's music feels timeless… Her songs feel divorced from time, lacking clues or signposts to indicate whether her stories and scenes might be set 500 years ago or yesterday… Often with Marling it's not entirely clear whether these songs are springing forth from a 21-year-old Englishwoman or some deathless, wandering spirit", writes the reviewer, regarding the album "…a brave artistic approach", calling Marling "an extremely commanding
UNCUT (magazine)
Uncut magazine, trademarked as UNCUT, is a monthly publication based in London. It is available across the English-speaking world, and focuses on music, but also includes film and books sections...
reviewer, too. "Laura Marling was born in Hampshire
Hampshire
Hampshire is a county on the southern coast of England in the United Kingdom. The county town of Hampshire is Winchester, a historic cathedral city that was once the capital of England. Hampshire is notable for housing the original birthplaces of the Royal Navy, British Army, and Royal Air Force...
in 1990… Yet she might just as easily have been born in Brooklyn
Brooklyn
Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...
in 1950, or Liverpool
Liverpool
Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...
in the 1980. From the moment Marling emerged, aged 18, with her remarkably assured debut, Alas I Cannot Swim, her music seemed to float high above the specifics of time, age and place", writes Graeme Thompson.
The Mitchell comparison crops up in the BBC Music
BBC Music
BBC Music is a team working in the department of Audio and Music Interactive at the BBC. Responsible for the BBC Music website - the portal site to music content across the BBC website....
, The Scotsman
The Scotsman
The Scotsman is a British newspaper, published in Edinburgh.As of August 2011 it had an audited circulation of 38,423, down from about 100,000 in the 1980s....
, The Independent
The Independent
The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...
and Daily Telegraph reviews, too. "…She wears her furrowed brow with a grace and stoic humour well in advance of her nu-folk peers; combining the sort of winking stoicism that was once the preserve of commie-sympathising, flinty-faced menfolk with the supple, jazzy tones of idol Joni Mitchell", writes Alex Denney of the BBC, referring to "The Beast" as a "rain-lashed monster of a tune" and calling another song, "Night After Night", a "classic, folksy pick that allows Marling's voice to revel in its own beauty". According to Telegraphs Helen Brown, "Like Mitchell, Marling started out as part of a 'new folk' scene... but has increasingly struck out alone into a starker, stranger and more jazz-inflected musical landscape. Like Mitchell, she stakes her claim to this territory with muscular, literate lyrics and idiosyncratic guitar tunings". The Irish Times
The Irish Times
The Irish Times is an Irish daily broadsheet newspaper launched on 29 March 1859. The editor is Kevin O'Sullivan who succeeded Geraldine Kennedy in 2011; the deputy editor is Paul O'Neill. The Irish Times is considered to be Ireland's newspaper of record, and is published every day except Sundays...
calls the album "a splendid musical progression" while according to the Paste Magazine, A Creature I Don't Know is Marling's "best album yet— definitely her most musically and lyrically ambitious".
Track listing
All songs were written by Laura Marling.- The Muse - 3:40
- I Was Just a Card - 3:30
- Don't Ask Me Why - 3:58
- Salinas - 4:37
- The Beast - 5:44
- Night After Night - 5:08
- My Friends - 3:58
- Rest in the Bed - 3:08
- Sophia - 4:51
- All My Rage - 2:47
- Flicker and Fail (iTunes bonus track)
Chart performance
| Chart (2011) | Peak position |
|---|---|
| Australian Albums Chart ARIA Charts The ARIA charts are the main Australian music sales charts, issued weekly by the Australian Recording Industry Association. The charts are a record of the highest selling singles and albums in various genres in Australia. ARIA commenced compiling its own charts in-house from the week ending 26 June... |
12 |
| Canadian Albums Chart Canadian Albums Chart The Canadian Albums Chart is the official album sales chart in Canada. It is compiled every Wednesday by U.S.-based music sales tracking company Nielsen Soundscan, and published every Thursday by Jam! Canoe and Billboard, along with its sister charts the Canadian Singles Chart and the Canadian BDS... |
77 |
| Dutch Albums Chart MegaCharts MegaCharts is responsible for the composition and exploitation of a broad collection of official charts in the Netherlands, of which the Mega Top 50 and the Mega Album Top 100 are the most known ones. Mega Charts also provides information to the Stichting Nederlandse Top 40, of which the Dutch Top... |
72 |
| Irish Albums Chart Irish Albums Chart The Irish Albums Chart is the Irish music industry standard albums popularity chart issued weekly by the Irish Recorded Music Association and compiled on its behalf by Chart-Track. Chart rankings are based on sales, which are compiled through over-the-counter retail data captured electronically... |
8 |
| UK Albums Chart UK Albums Chart The UK Albums Chart is a list of albums ranked by physical and digital sales in the United Kingdom. It is compiled every week by The Official Charts Company and broadcast on a Sunday on BBC Radio 1 , and published in Music Week magazine and on the OCC website .To qualify for the UK albums chart... |
4 |
Certifications
| Country | Certifier | Certification | Sales |
|---|---|---|---|
| United Kingdom | BPI British Phonographic Industry The British Phonographic Industry is the British record industry's trade association.-Structure:Its membership comprises hundreds of music companies including all four "major" record companies , associate members such as manufacturers and distributors, and hundreds of independent music companies... |
Silver | 60,000+ |
Release history
| Region | Date | Format | Label |
|---|---|---|---|
| Australia | 9 September 2011 | Digital download Music download A music download is the transferral of music from an Internet-facing computer or website to a user's local computer. This term encompasses both legal downloads and downloads of copyright material without permission or payment... |
Virgin Records |
| Ireland | |||
| United Kingdom | |||
| New Zealand |