Once I Was An Eagle
Laura Marling’s questing nature reaches its zenith on album four, the 16-song epic *Once I Was an Eagle*. It kicks off with a hypnotic four-track suite of songs tied together by a raga-like drone and hand percussion, sucking the listener into her existential headspace. Further in, there’s classical guitar (“Little Love Caster”), tender devotionals (“Love Be Brave”), and Dylan evocations (“It ain’t me, babe,” she affirms on “Master Hunter”), all stirred by her steely interrogations.
Recorded prior to a divesting move to Los Angeles, Laura Marling's fourth album is a vigorously polished, hard-won achievement. Expansive and ambitious, spare but intense, dark but somehow sexy, ...Eagle is a scorching interrogation of her own and other's follies that lifts the veil that once hung over her storytelling.
If the usual tropes about Laura Marling in the past have centered around the British singer-songwriter’s startling precocity, on her fourth album, Once I Was An Eagle, the conversation shifts to her maturity. At 23, Marling has clearly crafted her most virtuosic album—lyrically rich and engaging, with adept…
Laura Marling's fourth record in six years is a diverse, intelligent masterpiece.
In an age when single song downloads have become the norm and attention spans seem to be shrinking, concept albums—which…
Once I Was an Eagle, the fourth long-player from Laura Marling, finds the spectral folk singer relocating to Los Angeles, abandoning her backing band, and delivering a cumbersome yet remarkably confident 16-track, 63-minute collection of alternately intimate and grandiose pre-, present, and post-relationship songs that more or less obliterate her reputation as a stage fright-ridden, pale English flower.
It's hard to think of an artist that has shown as much musical growth in as short a time, but on her fourth album in five years, Laura Marli...
As a songwriter, Laura Marling has always gone toe-to-toe with her womanhood and its role in her relationships.
Clash reviews 'Once I Was An Eagle', the new album from acclaimed English folk singer Laura Marling
Laura Marling's relocation to LA has brought a newfound confidence and adventure in the singer-songwriter, writes <strong>Kitty Empire</strong>
Laura Marling just might be an angel, or the closest thing that contemporary music has to one.
Northern Transmissions Reviews "I Was An Eagle" By Laura Marling "I Was An Eagle" by Laura Marling will be released on May 28 via Rough Trade Records
<p>Laura Marling's fourth album kicks in with a thrilling – and unexpected – relentlessness. What's happened to the Brontësque singer-songwriter who seemed born to be mild, asks <strong>Alexis Petridis</strong></p>
Laura Marling's poetic elegance reaches places others don't even get close to. It's a masterpiece, says Neil McCormick.
Prolific young songwriter releases her 'Blonde on Blonde'. CD review by Lisa-Marie Ferla